Berry Hill egregious taco packaging saga continued (with photos)

So I’m a green freak, but Berry Hill’s (360 & Westlake Dr in Austin) breakfast taco packaging is over the top by any standards. They make McDonald’s DLT burger box look like a Prius next to this Hummer of a to-go order. One would hope that tacos protected by tin foil and Styrofoam and accompanied by a whole utensil set and chips would be a culinary masterpiece.  Sorry, they’re not even that good. If you want great breakfast tacos then go to Texas Honey Ham on Bee Cave. Those tacos are AWESOME and appropriately packaged.

That is a lot of packaging for 6 tacos!

Looks like a lot of food, but is it? No.

The picture below is not a packaging rant because I’m not sure which way makes sense. Ideally, the plastic box would be reusable. We could buy the appropriately packaged cheese and restore it in the convenient box. The strange part is that the price is identical. I would expect that the more durable package costs something extra.  This confirms that retail pricing is not logical - people buy on impression and instinct.

More questionable packaging? Same amount of cheese, but lots more plastic.

1960 NASA = Engineers? Do we need another Moon Shot?

I had an interesting green tech conversation germinated by the statement “my liberal NASA engineer sister says that she can’t vote for Obama.”  This is based on the expectation that Obama lacks support for the current administration’s doomed manned Mars mission.

I’m skipping over the politics to jump into a different issue: solving our energy problems requires a new generation of kick-ass engineers.  Unfortunately, we have not been cultivating a large crop of our best and brightest to become engineers and scientists.

Oil on the Moon!

Many kids were inspired to become scientists and engineers when the Nation had a clear Space Race objective in the 60s.  I was part of this generation that grew up *knowing* it was cool and fun to build things.  At every level, our schools invested in feeding intellectual curiosity and funding science education.  While few became actual “rocket scientists” many were inspired and America build a huge technological lead.

In my conversation we generally agreed that 1) science/engineering is not inspiring (or profitable) right now and 2) current “energy independence” and “green environmentalism” initiatives are not sufficiently motivating.

These are very solvable problems!  The solution is LEADERSHIP and COMMITMENT to make this a national priority.  People will follow career opportunities and fame.  The X-Prize and DARPA grand challenge models have proven that we can create programs that inspire and reward people to become scientists and engineers.  Let’s put the sexy back in sextant!

Green Office meets Dilbert (+ interesting tidbits on HVAC design)

The fact that Scott Adam’s Dilbert is making fun of office greening is a major milestone!  It signal that business are starting to adjust (see note below).  It’s interesting that the justification is business legitimate sounding “to reduce expenses” instead of Pointy Haired green washing.

Personally, my office has both a causal dress code (engineers can/do wear shorts, black socks optional) and very cold air conditioning.

Note: My experience with office HVAC is that most systems are simply NOT setup to save energy by raising the temperature because they have to run a single massive chiller anyway.  My building is only 3 years old, but these “pre-energy cost spike” design dinosaurs are ubiquitous.  Adding a small “pony” chiller to handle most of the load could make a HUGE (really, HUGE) savings.

Building owners generally do not care about energy waste in their properties because the costs are PASSED THROUGH to the tenants.  The tenants could object, but they have very little awareness of their choice or influence.  This is exactly the type of broken anti-virtuous cycle that requires government / utility company intervention to fix!

Dead horse or just proving the point? alt energy = cheap oil

Several people have sited this New York Times article by Thomas Friedman about Dutch energy independence recently.  The basic theme is that their response to the 70s embargo was to purse energy independence as a national strategy.  Their methods are not 21th century sunshine and light green tech - they are a mix of innovation, stewardship, and smart efficiency improvements.

We can’t just hope that radical innovations solve the energy problem, we need a multifaceted approach with a sound economic model.  Dutch Treat?

Added Note: Another dead horse?  Read Friedman’s call for a national energy independence plan.  He compares our President’s mistaken push to drill more oil to his post-9/11 “go shopping” directive.  Now that was a moment of shining leadership!

Go Green Now! I wish I could go!

There is a Green Tech Alliance (GRA) Go Green Now! green event today in green Austin.  It looks green great, but I have meetings all day (Agile Scrum Planning) and can’t go.  If you go, please tell me about it!

Go Green Now…

Solar update…12 volt A/C?!

I thought it was worth amending my disparging comment about residential solar based on new information.

The AustinEV thread continues (and grows) about residential solar and 12 volt DC air conditioning.  DC A/C powered by solar would match peak generation (hot days) with the primary consumption (hot days).  Very interesting - why aren’t new home using this?!?

I think that residential solar is a bad fit for home given our current power loads, but would be excellent if we were more sustainable in our consumption (read: efficient).

I’ll go farther - I believe that houses should be switching to DC power instead of AC.  Most items in my house are DC and require converter bricks that waste power.  If we can have DC options for primary big consumers (A/C, refrigerator, water heater, dryer) than we could actually store power locally!

Kindle, kinda kool and saves paper & shipping

My awesome, wonderful, thoughtful, considerate, blog reading mother-in-law bought me a Kindle this summer.  She also bought Laura a Sony eBook Reader so I’ll do a comparison post later.  The short version - I recommend getting a Kindle ($360 from Amazon) if you like to read.

Anyway, I’ve been using the reader and starting to enjoy the benefits and discount the apparent disadvantages.  eBooks are generally 50% less (65% if you factor in shipping) and there is materials or delivery waste.  So theoretically, they should have a smaller environmental impact.  I’m not sure that a electronic gadget with a 3 year life expectancy is really better than a book with a 100 year shelf life.  Especially if it’s hard to loan/borrow your eBooks.  Our home selves are bursting with great (and not-so-great) reads.

Here are some of the features that I really like:

1. it’s small compared to most books (and even better since it can be multiple books)
2. it’s online so you can buy new books, browse the Internet, google, etc
3. it’s very readable (display rocks)
4. you can get book samples and “browse” books before you buy them.  If you like the sample, just click buy on the last page and keep reading.  It’s that fast.
5. you can find books on Amazon and 1-click buy/download them to be reading in second (yes, seconds)
6. Things I should like, but have not tried: it can play music, show photos, plus subscribe to newspapers, magazines, and blogs (this is a pay thing).

Amazon Kindle

Update 8/13: read the comments to hear about FeedBooks! They rock.

Solar so far so so

An interesting quote from the AustinEV (off topic) discussion on solar. Bruce J from Madison WI has an array that cost $13k to install. Like my EV, it’s not a profit center. His says he did it “because it is SOMETHING. And if *everybody* does *something* then great things will happen.”

Solar is Austin is subsidized by the local power company, but still have very long pay back. California has demand (time-of-day) billing so their solar arrays produce power at peak (3 x $). Since home use is mainly off-peak, the California arrays can reduce utility bills dramatically.

The big problem with solar for US homes is that WE USE TOO MUCH POWER to make an array practical.  An off-the-grid array is either really expensive, requires a life style change, or uninvented technology.  I don’t think that it makes sense to turn roof-tops into solar farms because most individuals are not equipped to maintain them.   Parking lots, however, could be excellent solar sites!

Developing countries like Africa are a stark contrast to the US.  Their current power demand is near zero.  A tiny solar array can make a life changing difference.  For example, the BOGO light initiative sends solar LED flashlights to Africa and allows people there to have lights on a night.  THEY ARE SO POOR - THEY DON”T HAVE LIGHTS AT NIGHT.   They don’t care about air conditioning, dryers, or plasma TVs.  In these places, solar is a huge wind fall.

Buy One, Give On (BoGo) Light

I love Ubuntu 8.04 - it just works! (plus, notes on Cisco VPN install)

This is totally Off Topic for this blog, but I have to say that I love Ubuntu.  My XP laptop’s networking got completely borked and I decided to shift over to Ubuntu (8.04 Hardy Heron).  We’ve been using it at work for our conference room very smoothly.  It has everything that I needed (Skype, FFox, Email & Office, RDP, VNC, etc) and a faster better (and funner!) user experience than Windoze.

Ubuntu Rockz

The only challenge I encountered was getting the VPN to connect.  The nice vpnc client did not give enough feedback to troubleshoot so I dropped back to Cisco’s hacky feeling client.  I wanted to document my experience for others…

Microsoft + European Beachs = Social Environmentalism?

GreenMonk posted an interesting link to a Microsoft web site, EyeOnEarth, that tracks water conditions of European beaches.  Putting this information online is nice, but the social Web 2.0 aspect got my interest.  Tom Raftery says “this community-based approach makes it an exceedingly powerful tool and this has to be the first time we have seen grassroots activism, supported by central transparency, powered by Microsoft!”

Social Environmentalism - beach goers can report conditions