Atlanta Housing Source

Recycle Your Electronics – Keep Norcross Beautiful

Saturday, 10/09/10 – 9:00am-1:00pm

Norcross Cultural Arts & Community Center

ACCEPTABLE ELECTRONICS
Personal Computers Laptops Modems
Floppy/Disk Drives Printers UPS Batteries
CD-Roms Fax Machines Cell Phones
Circuit Boards Copiers Phones
PC Power Supplies Music/VCR/CD players Scanners
Keyboards Typewriters Microwaves
Mouse/Mice Test Equipment Wire/Cabling
PC Monitors Networking Equipment Wire/Cabling Servers

Join us on the same day for our canned food collection for local food banks! Clean out your pantry and bring non-perishable food items, to be donated to our local food banks and given to members of our community in need. You do not need to make a donation in order to participate in the Clean-up and Recycle Events, but it is greatly appreciated.

CONTACT: Philomena Robertson
770-448-7327
probertson@norcrossga.net

The City of Norcross will again host a community Clean-up Day, Shred Day, and Electronics Recycling events and our canned food drive!

On Saturday, October 9, 2010 the City of Norcross will be offering a secure way to destroy confidential records. American Security Shredding will be bringing two of their Onsite Shred Trucks to shred personal documents free of charge.

STOP IDENTITY THEFT AND RECYCLE AT THE SAME TIME! After the secure shredding is complete, all material will become recycled.

Place: Norcross City Hall, 65 Lawrenceville Street

Date: Saturday, 10/09/10

Time: 9:00 am—1:00 pm

Join us on the same day for our canned food collection for local food  banks! Clean out your pantry and bring nonperishable food items, to be donated to our local food banks and given to members of our community in need. You do not need to make a donation in order to participate in the Cleanup and Recycle Events but it is greatly appreciated.

 For more information contact Philomena Robertson at 770-448-7327 or probertson@norcrosga.net.

The production of 1 ton of cardboard requires:

•17 trees for the use of pulp
•7000 gallons of water
•462 gallons of oil
•1 ton of cardboard uses 9 cubic yards of landfill space and dumping paper products in landfills adds methane to the atmosphere as it decomposes, with 20 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide.
•In 2003, paper and paperboard accounted for 35 percent of the total materials discarded in the United States. Just imagine the impact we could make by reducing the need for so much cardboard.
•In the U.S. we have lost 95 percent of our old growth forests.
•The U.S. pulp and paper industry is the second largest consumer of energy and uses more water to produce a ton of product than any other industry.
•According to the American Forest and Paper Association in 2008 the average person in the US added 220 lbs of paper waste to our landfills.

Go through these shocking truths about the environment of our planet and share them with your friends.
•80% of the world’s forests are gone.
•Over 40% of all tropical forests have been destroyed and another acre is lost each second.
•The US has less than 4% of its forests left.
•The U.S. burns 10,000 gallons of gasoline a second. Burning one gallon of gas creates 22 lbs of carbon dioxide. Now that’s 220,000 lbs of Co2 per second.
•An average American creates 4.5 lbs. garbage a day — an amount doubled from 30 years ago.
•Every year we throw away 24 million tons of leaves and grass. Leaves alone account for 75% of our solid waste in the fall.
•Over 100 pesticide ingredients are suspected to cause birth defects, cancer, and gene mutations.
•99% of all those things we buy are not in use after 6 months.
•Every ton of recycled office paper saves 380 gallons of oil.
•About 1% of U.S. landfill space is full of disposable diapers, which take 500 years to decompose.
•40% of our waterways are undrinkable.
•The US has 5% of the world’s population and 30% of the waste.
•Energy saved from one recycled aluminum can will operate a TV set for 3 hours, and is the equivalent to half a can of gasoline.
•As per an estimation by The University of California, 30,000 deaths occur a year because of gasoline or diesel fuel use.
•Approximately, 70,000 people in the U.S die prematurely from heart and lung disease aggravated by particulate air pollution.
•Glass produced from recycled glass instead of raw materials reduces related air pollution by 20%, and water pollution by 50%.
•Americans annually use 50 million tons of paper. This equals the consumption of more than 850 million trees.
•Homeowners use up to 10 times more toxic chemicals per acre than farmers.
•Turning down your central heating thermostat by one degree can cut fuel consumption by as much as 10%.
•Insulating your attic reduces the amount of energy loss in most houses by up to 20%.
•The amount of glass disposed of in 1990 was enough to fill the Twin Towers (1,350 feet high) of New York’s World Trade Center every two weeks.
•Using energy efficient bulbs in place of every 75 watt light bulbs can prevent 1 ton of carbon dioxide from being released in the air.
•Many banks lent large sums of money to developing nations. In order to pay those debts plus interest many nations have turned to the mining of their natural resources as a source of financial aid.
•40,000 children in the world die every year from preventable diseases.
•The human population of the world is expected to rise by nearly three times by the year 2100.
•A 3% annual population growth will result in the doubling of consumption and production of food and other products within 2033.
•The number of automobiles is expected to increase by 15 million per year until at least 2010.
•The world’s per capita grain production has been on the downfall since 1985 despite the use of fertilizers and pesticides. Already a train system has been developed (back in 1987) which is based on magnetic levitation and causes minimal pollution. These versions of a train are already in use in several countries.
•Fibre optics, made of glass, are being used to replace copper cables throughout the world.
•Uncontrolled fishing has resulted in the reduction of the population of many commercial species; some upto one-tenth of their original population.
•Every day 50 to 100 species of plants and animals become extinct as their habitat and human activities destroy them.

When I worked in Tulsa Ok in the early 1980s they had a way to store electricity in what amounted to a big ‘battery’. You see the electrical generating plants come on line and they run continuously because they take to long to bring on line. They can’t just turn them on and off at the drop of a hat as demand goes up and down.

The problem has been the high demand during daylight hours and the low demand during nighttime. How do you save the excess energy generated?

At night they generate just as much energy as they do in the daytime. The big issue is that the usage is down during the night so power is plentiful, actually wasted. The challenge is how to store that excess energy generated at night for use the next day, hence the ‘battery’.

Outside of Tulsa they built a thing they call ‘pumped-storage’. (To find out more about pumped storage, click here.) They built a lake at the top of a hill and at night they pump water from a lower level lake to the lake at the top.

They fill the upper lake with 4 giant turbines pumping water through 14’ pipes called, penstocks, up the hill with the excess night electricity. Then the next day, during peak power needs, the water flows back downhill through the turbines and generates electricity. Read more details about the Salina OK Pumped-Storage facility.

Now another alternative ‘battery’, the use of ice to store energy has been developed and written up in the NY Times article.

Alternative green energy sources need to be further explored, but I think some of these ideas are proving to be viable and I wanted to share them with you.

For those of us following the Green path this announcement of a big step our country could take towards energy independence is encouraging.

See Reuters Article about Impact of Wind Power on the US

I wanted to purchase LED (Light Emitting Diode) flood lamps to replace the one around the home that take a 30’ ladder to change and because I use them for security and burn a lot of duty hours.  I don’t climb ladders and don’t own one for that reason.  I want the 30,000 hour life cycle to avoid climbing the ladder to change those in high places and I like that I can burn less the watts as an incandescent or compact flourscent to save money. 

I have figured each LED watt is much less watt equivalent output as a traditional bulb.  LED watts equal 4 to 7 watts incandescent, and not all LED watts are equal.   I found this out when I bought a 4 watt and it wasn’t bright enough.  

Next I then went to a 5o LED traditional looking flood bulb that was about 14 watts.  It wasn’t bright enough for the outside lighting but makes great down light in the kitchen can lights.  

Cree is LED maker that sells great LEDs for manufactures to put into their bulbs.  I’m now up to a 21 watt LED to equal a 75 watt incandescent. It has 7 bulbs. They are some of the brightest.  This is now bright enough to light the back yard and driveway.   

The bulbs are typically made up in an aluminum housing that holds the LEDs in place.  The weight was an issue on pointing in the correct direction and keeping the bulb from turning in the fixture.  There are ones like the traditional glass flood but I had trouble finding one with enough light. 

First research had me buying from new internet sources that I never knew before.  Most experiences were positive.  My first order, I ordered PAR 30 lights that are small flood type that are short and small diameter.  They wouldn’t fit into the fixture so I had to order their big brother the PAR 38 which is equal in size to the traditional outdoor flood light.   

I am now looking for a candelabra style bulb bulbs with the small screw in base for my porch lights.  Each has 3 bulbs and I burn them from sun down to sun up. I have a programmable switch mounted behind the cover that a traditional light switch goes into.  It can be programmed to change with daylight savings time and adjusts for sundown and sun up automatically each day. It is so cool to help me manage usage. 

The candelabra bulbs I use are 25 to 40 watts. The largest LED wattage I have found are about 15 watt incandescent equivalent.  Not enough light. 

I also have not found a traditional round bulb for table lamp usage that throw off enough light. The key to look for is what watt replacement the LED is and there are no set standards. This makes it tough. I’ve bought 5 bulbs at anywhere from $20 to $69 dollars each.  I’ve spent a small fortune experimenting buying online.   

Research has turned up a Chinese company that will let me import at considerable savings (50%) but the minimum order quantity is 300.  I wont need 300 in a life time with their duty cycle.  I was so please when I found Home Depot started selling LED lights on line. 

The latest I found in that FEIT, the manufacturer that I first bought their compact florescent bulbs in 1997 is getting into the LED business.  Back then compact fluorescents were about $10 to $15 each. Now they are $2 to $4 each.  With them and other big distributors coming on board prices will start to fall.   

FEIT LED lights are now being sold in Lowe’s stores.  That is where I bought the latest and best light. It is the Performance LED 21w = 75w, 75 Watt Replacement Uses Only 21 Watts.  The Chamblee Lowe’s store had 4 quantity display pack on the shelf.  I bought one to try, in case it was another let down in light quantity and quality.  I am very happy with the black metal casing light, very happy and so is my wife. 

The key is to follow my advice and experimenting, or buy one at a time and try it out till it the correct brightness for the application.  There are also choices in light color so experiment there.  I bought cool white and warm light. Anne, my wife likes the warm white and I like the cool white.   

I was a pioneer using compact fluorescents back in 1997 to save on operating coast and to reduce the heat that incandescent bulbs give off that you then have to cool in summer.  My early use of compact fluorescents brought down costs for all of you but at the cost of some inconveniences that are the light slowly starts up, strange light color and mercury when they broke.  

Now with my conversion to LED, I am becoming mercury free as opposed to compact fluorescent, have a 30,000 hour light life, the lights operate cool so no heat is given off to the cool down in the summer, some light instantly so no waiting like with compact fluorescent, and they cost a whole lot less, up to 90% less to operate.