Ethanol is coming to the Turnpike

July 4th, 2008 • 4 comments environmentalism
Tags: crist, environmentalism, ethanol, florida

Well, at least at the Port St. Lucie service plaza according to TCPalm.com (don’t bother reading the comments, they’re pretty much focused on bashing Crist). While this is a welcome addition to the CITGO pumps already in place that readily provide gas for travelers approximately every 45 miles, is this “too little, too late”? Quite possibly. They’re adding E85 pumps to this service plaza in order to help people squeeze more value from every tank although, it’s at a cost anda disadvantage. This pump will more than likely carry the highest priced E85 gasoline in the state — all of the plazas already have gas prices some 7%-10% higher than the rest of the state. It’s going to be a distinct disadvantage because the number of cars able to easily run on E85 are much smaller than people realize. Ford’s dual fuel cars and Chevy/GM’s Flexfuel cars probably number 1 in every 200 or less, it’s not a very high ratio. Even when I was commuting heavily for work, I probably saw only a few Flexfuel vehicles a week (and of course, they were all trucks and SUVs, not vehicles that can benefit from it the most).

So why use E85 if it’s not going to be selling like hot cakes?

Because I believe that Governor Crist is trying to do everything he can to help his state out. After approving the state-funded buy-out of US Sugar, Crist’s green-o-meter shot up quite a good bit. He’s looking to hit another sweet spot with us environmentalists with his latest move, thinking we’ll kowtow over getting a readily available E85 distributor on the Turnpike. However, why not simply go the route that Shell’s going and put E10/E15 in all the gas as a standard? I suspect this has more to do with CITGO than Crist, though. Nearly all gasoline-powered cars manufactured in the last 10 years can run on up to 15% ethanol without any modifications whatsoever. About 90% of all Fords manufactured in the last 8 years state this very clearly in their manual and I’m fairly certain my 15 year old Saturn will have no issues with it as well. I do whole heartedly admit that adding this option is a step in the right direction but it’s leading with the wrong foot entirely. Besides the fact that the ethanol will probably be more expensive than the stations in both Tallahassee and Miami, many people may simply ruin their engines thinking they can run it in their cars without any modifications whatsoever. Using E85 not only means you’re using more fuel due to lower detonation pressures, you also get lower miles per gallon because of this.

Is this state approved greenwash?

I’m going to have to side with “yes” on this one. Besides the above points (potentially higher cost, can’t reliably run in unmodified engines, loss of MPG, etc.), most people have absolutely no idea what E85 really is. All they know is it’s “gas made from corn” and that it’s supposed to be better for the environment. My father, who pays little attention to news other than local news and politics, even knows that ethanol sucks and is doing damage to the food industry and food stream. I can’t even get him to recycle on a regular basis but he knows that using corn for fuel is boneheaded. And he’s 66. Well past the target market of most green/sustainable advertising and marketing. Sure, he’s an outlier because he knows that I care about what’s going on but that doesn’t mean other people shouldn’t be made aware. I know this is posited in so many other places and much better than I can say: using food stuffs for fuel kills our appetites. I know that corn is over $7 a bushel now thanks to ethanol and that’s great for farmers who primarily grow corn. But it’s bad for the fact that other farmers are jumping on the bandwagon and converting their well-bedded plots to corn fields. Why is this an issue? Just ask any corn farmer and they’ll tell you growing corn simply destroys soil after a meager number of harvests, this is why they routinely rotate corn for something else and wait a few harvests before planting corn again (some even wait a full season or two just to let the soil regain nutrients). This means that with more farmers converting to corn, it has a two fold effect: 1. it’s taking corn from the food stream, driving up the price of food (many farm animals eat corn and if it costs more to feed them, it costs more to make your hamburgers or hams or buffalo wings or whatever), 2. it reduces arable land for other crops and corn (leading to infertile soil and lots of soil erosion, I only know this part because friends of mine in NC had to rotate corn in their harvests). If you take your 2000 acre farm that’s used to grow many different food stuffs and convert a large portion of that to corn just to see a short return on investment, you’ll be missing out after harvest time comes and your soil is incapable of growing your other crops.

But back to the greenwash. Little other alternative sources are as available right now as corn-based ethanol is in the US but that’s going to change since much of the Midwest was flooded this year, killing hundreds of thousands of acres of arable land. This now means that 9 ethanol production plants are now getting canned altogether or building is delayed since there’s suddenly a whole lot less corn to go around to waste on fuel production. And based on data from previous studies (this was also covered in National Geographic Magazine, October 2007 edition), corn — by the ton — is shown to be extremely inefficient in fuel production compared to other biofuels like soy and algae (not that soy is much better, nor are grasses). People are making biofuels out of almost anything these days and much of it is more efficient than corn. But hey, it’s not gasoline — totally — so it must be good for the environment, right? That’s what Crist is banking on most people thinking, I can guarantee you.

Where to go from here

Combine fuel production inefficiency with the fact that E85 can make your engine explode or simply eat through your fuel lines, placing these pumps on the Turnpike is a terrible idea. Besides the infrastructure cost required (pumps can cost upwards of $200,000 and will require an entirely different fuel delivery truck thus doubling the gas wasted to deliver gas to the station), I doubt that there will be usage warnings posted about what E85 works in and what it doesn’t work in. Consumer education will go leaps and bounds higher than these pumps would and could easily be more effective in teaching people to simply develop better driving techniques. What is going to be more costly for a consumer who already has a car in this situation and they decide they want to use E85? Sure, they’ll save a few dollars at the pump but if their engine decides to detonate from ethanol’s higher explosion pressures or eats their fuel lines, they’ll then get to spend untold amounts of money on repairs and a rental car. Or they can simply trade in their current car for a new flexible fuel vehicle that will cost more monetarily and more than likely, environmentally as well. You can go and buy a new Chevy Impala with FlexFuel (since it’s the only car option they offer, everything else is a truck, van, or SUV/cross-over) and happily spend what little money you have left on a biofuel that’ll make you feel better.

Would I like to shell out a few thousand dollars to replace the engine in our Focus? Yeah, I would but not because I blew it up using the wrong fuel. I’d rather spend that money overhauling the engine, boring out the throttle body, using lighter engine parts, adding a more efficient air supply system, and a whole host of options to make it run more efficiently. I can think of much better ways to spend that money.

I don’t know how much research was conducted on the viability and consumer usability of ethanol biofuel, but I can almost guarantee you that Crist was telling his team to do anything to help his constituency save money at the pump. Unfortunately, this was a bad move on their part. Opting to institute E10 on all pumps would’ve been much cheaper because you don’t have to replace anything at all and all it requires from CITGO is another delivery to completely replace the current one and then some signage to proudly display the use of ethanol for all engine types. Hell, they can take it one step further and add in biodiesels to help out our trucking industry since their rigs can readily run biodiesel with little or no modifications at all and would benefit from it much more than a regular consumer ever would. If we can drive down the cost of logistics and over-land transport, we’d be solving a lot more economic problems than a few new gasoline pumps will.

I congratulate you, Charlie Crist (especially now that you’re engaged!), but you need to make sure that your aides and staff members are doing research that makes sense for all of us, not a minority of the auto-owning population. There’s so much more that you could be persuading companies and consumers to do than gobble up even more gas in their corn cars.

New milk jug design causes furor

July 2nd, 2008 • 2 comments environmentalism
Tags: environmentalism

So apparently someone designed a new milk jug (decent aggregator of some articles regarding this as I didn’t want to do 15 different links). It’s supposed to cut down on plastic use and be lighter and a bunch of other crap but really, what does this thing look like to most people who’ve ever worked fast food? A grease jug, just a small opaque one. Or a small metal gas can like you’d see on WWII-era Jeeps. Either way it’s ugly and doesn’t look like it took a whole lot of thought to “design” (see grease jug, shrink, make white, profit). But it’s supposed to be very good for the environment because it uses less plastic and is in fact lighter all the while delivering fresher milk to consumers. I’m all for fresh milk although, I only drink soy. I know that my girlfriend and my father will be happy about that. However, this isn’t what has customers pissed off, it’s the poor design.

Have you ever tried to empty a grease container to fill a fryer? All it does is glug-glug straight out. While not messy once you get the hang of it, the sheer force of a gallon — or 5 — shooting out of a small opening does create a certain amount of inertia, enough to jerk it from a steady hand. I can see this having a similar effect since it’s basically the same design and design flaw. Lacking a proper amount of plastic to create a raised spout means you’ve got an entire gallon of milk trying to bust out of that jug at once and you’re supposed to keep hold of it. But that lack of a spout means that these are more flat and infinitely more stackable which is a plus I supposed — this is mentioned at the NY Times but I didn’t read that article so go there for more stacking info.

Apparently this thing was designed by an engineer and not a designer. Call me shocked. The fact that this was designed at all shocks me. As previously alluded to, it’s a white near carbon-copy of grease jugs in fast food places so I don’t see much design here at all. The handle is placed near the top, creating an excellent imbalance when all that milk is gushing out and the force slaps the bottle against your wrist or rips it out of your hand. Didn’t anyone market test these things or were they just straight to production? I can just see some poor waif/schlep buying some of this at Costco and taking it home busting their wrist on it or breaking a foot bone and suing over poor design,

All in all, this is an OK first try, certainly not something I would’ve expected to be fast-tracked to stores with such a badly designed milk delivery mechanism (flat top, no spout, bad handle placement). You can tell this was more about efficiency of the product and inventory control than it was about a product delivering on multiple fronts for consumers.

Florida buys out US Sugar

June 25th, 2008 • 1 comment environmentalism

Yesterday, it was announced that the state of Florida was buying back a huge portion of the Everglades, the most ecologically diverse wetlands in North America. All I can say is thank you. The state is buying roughly 300 square miles back from US Sugar, the nation’s largest cane sugar company. The plan roughly comes out to the state buying the entire company for a hair under two billion dollars and giving them 6 years to pull up the stakes and move out. This will leave roughly another 400 square miles still in use for sugar cane production. I’ll miss my sugar in 6 years but I think I can make due with agave nectar.

Boom or Bust?

It’s both actually. We Floridians are regaining our beloved wetlands while everyone else loses out on sugar. Too bad, suckers. The current CEO of US Sugar states he’s “not a little bit saddened” at the prospect of being bought out for $1.75 billion dollars. Who would be sad? He’s the CEO and will be making some serious coin off this deal, along with the compensation and severance packages all of the employees will be receiving. It’s a loss to the sugar industry for sure but it’s truly a gain for our wildlife. While the constant drought, brush fires, and extreme farming are killing the Everglades, so are a lot of other things. The farming reroutes the water unnaturally and keeps certain areas parched for weeks or months at a time during the dry season. Brush fires due to drought and heat are an expected way of life in the wetlands but they’re no doubt helped by farming. The ecology itself is direly threatened by invasive non-native species such as Melaleuca trees, Latin and Central American birds, non-native African snakes and the list goes on.

When I was going to school for my first Bachelor’s Degree, the teacher that probably impressed upon the most was Dr. Allen Dray, a lead researcher on using native and non-native species to fight melaleuca plant invasion. Sure, he taught me economics and statistics and project management but nothing shone through more than his own love for his job: harvesting bugs to kill trees. He loves the Everglades and has been working there for years trying to combat the extremely water-hungry trees. I can only imagine that Florida’s new initiative to preserve and restore the state’s most amazing asset has him in either tears or jumping for joy, I can see him doing both. This new deal gives him and the rest of the Invasive Plant Research Laboratory researchers a much bigger sandbox in which to play; besides, their research lab is something to behold in and of itself, its windows can withstand Category 4 force hurricane winds and not flinch.

New conservation efforts will be readily made

Since the Everglades is the state’s largest national park amassing literally one-fourth of the entire state, the restoration efforts to begin in 6 years will undoubtedly bring new life to local conversation efforts. Our own little slice of the Everglades just a few miles away is always up for grabs in conservation efforts, some successful some not. This buy back will serve as a platform for shrinking other sugar production in the area, I’m sure, albeit slowly. I hope that wildlife tours will pick back up as they’ve been trailing off in the last few years. Why aren’t parents teaching their kids about the awesomeness of the outdoors and how cool animals are? Every time we go to Lion Country Safari, it’s amazing and we’ve seen all the animals before. Our recent visit to Morikami Japanese Gardens was just amazing even though we stomped a third of a mile in a torrential downpour. Sugar Sands Park is a great place to go and relax on a bike ride and it’s just a 5 minute bike ride from us. There’s all this awesome ecology around us and kids around here probably can’t stomach camping out in the woods let alone having some fun in a giant swamp right their backyards. But given this buy back, I believe that county school systems will try to reintroduce many students to the cool stuff they can find right outside their house. When I lived in Georgia, a similar effort was made by the state to raise awareness of the Okefenokee Swamp and wetlands and it was a success. I can see the same thing happening here.

Now, I hope Palm Beach and Broward counties will take a restoration effort to their beaches soon. Many of the beaches in Ft. Lauderdale are like sandy garbage dumps and aren’t very scenic, same way in Miami. Ever see the movie Bad Boys 2? Most of those beach scenes were actually filmed in Delray Beach because Miami’s beaches are trashed and overcrowded for the most part. The beaches are becoming more littered and actually shrinking as time goes on so I really hope they try and start saving them before our dunes disappear.

Erroneous editorial

June 22nd, 2008 • chatter, environmentalism

I was just reading through my feeds and came across this badly written (and even more poorly copy edited) editorial — source and author unknown — mostly about alternatives to oil-based energy. The writer spends most of the entire editorial lampooning solar energy and talking up natural gas. It’s very light on facts, after all it is an editorial, and heavy on poorly informed opinions. The author states that a 1200+ megawatt LNG drilling port off the coast of Broward County is going to be more efficient and useful than a 75 megawatt solar installation in Martin County. Well, sure it’s going to produce more energy but it’s in no terms more efficient. And apparently the offshore port is going to be less vulnerable to hurricanes. Less vulnerable than what, cows in Montana? Sure, the pipeline will be underwater but the actual drilling port won’t be so I fail to realize how a giant metal spire sticking up in the Atlantic Ocean is less vulnerable to hurricanes than an apparently non-existent more vulnerable alternative is. It’s in the Atlantic, it’s in South Florida, and it’s a giant lightning pole. I really don’t see the “less vulnerable” part here. It will get hit by hurricanes and probably heavily damaged in the process. That 75 megawatt solar field will be a lot less costly to replace entirely than it will be to replace even a quarter of a drilling outfit. Panels are getting a lot cheaper than the author is privy to although it’s pretty common knowledge, you can find out that new production innovations have brought the cost per watt close to $1, the same as coal.

Languish or Learn?

The same author also takes this piece as a way to poke a jab at our own Tri-Rail system which they see as a failed method of transport despite its ridership skyrocketing 46% over the same time period last year. So a nearly 50% increase in riders and revenue makes this a failed railway? Hardly. I’ve been in Palm Beach County for 4 years and many of my coworkers (and my girlfriend’s) have relied on Tri-Rail for transport because of expenses. We lack any good mass transit down here but Tri-Rail is the only thing that’s not failed. Amtrak is a bust, bus routes are a bust — they’re only successful in Ft. Lauderdale and Miami — and not getting better, and taxis are just overpriced. I see over 15,000 passengers a day over 7,000 last year as a sign of a booming rail system.

The author is also quick to point out that FPL’s planned solar field in Martin County will be mostly paid for by customers. Shocking. Isn’t this how most public service infrastructure is paid for? The Florida Turnpike is almost solely paid for by its customers. Nearly all telecommunications infrastructure is paid for by its customers. I’d like the author to find a public service that isn’t nearly wholly subsidized by its customers, after all we’re paying for a service we use otherwise, why are we paying at all? It’s capitalism in action. Their own salary is funded by their readership.

I read a lot of badly written stuff everyday but the first 1/3 of this editorial (really, it’s an op-ed, there’s a pretty big difference according to my mother, a 20+ year veteran of being a news editor and reporter). It really seems like this writer is just pissed that they might have to pay for a lower output infinitely renewable energy source than an ultimately limited and non-renewable higher output energy source. Yes, solar is grossly underpowered for how much land it takes for field installs but that’s changing with each innovation in solar panel production methods. If people can utilize enough panels just on their house to feed back into the grid, there’s obviously more to it than the author wants to admit or realizes.

New Klean Kanteen in hand

June 20th, 2008 • environmentalism

I got my new 27oz. Klean Kanteen two days ago from reusablebags.com. I got the blue one so I could differentiate mine from my girlfriend’s, it’s a splendidly nice color. I had to order it from a 3rd party because the team at Klean Kanteen never returned my email about when the kolor ones were going to be released for sale and I sent it probably 2 weeks ago. Still waiting, guys!

They changed up the design on the loop cap versus the older bottles. It’s now made of PP #5 and has a smaller profile. It’s also now hollow whereas before the top was a solid piece of plastic top to bottom, they simply bored out the middle to save on weight and plastic. They also removed the outer nubs on the external base of the top — which was the only thing providing grip — and replaced them with the words ‘klean kanteen’. I can’t blame them for putting their name all over their product but it’s made opening the new top more difficult since there’s little to no traction on the recessed lettering. Lack of usable traction surface is my only gripe with the new top, I like the smaller design a lot more. Since I have two other bottles, I just swapped out the more usable older loop cap onto the new bottle and put the older one in my hurricane emergency kit.

My one real big complaint is that the blue paint, and I’m sure this applies to all of the new colors, is friggin’ smooth! It’s got a light sheen and is very vibrant but it poses one simple problem: it’s too smooth. I picked it up to take a drink a minute ago and since it’s covered in condensation, I could hardly get the thing open without the bottle turning. The older non-painted stainless bottles were smooth to the touch but were not completely slick unlike this one. Some powder coating or something would really make these colors so much better…besides a hot pink color for my girlfriend. Next redesign guys, add in some texturing for grip. I know this won’t be a problem for everyone but it’s always humid here in Florida and I literally take this thing everywhere, I may have to rough up this pretty paint job.

I also ordered some ChicoBags to give to my family. One was ripped on the side and I’ve got to return it for an exchange. I got the mango ones which are really more orange than mango but very easy to see, almost like a dayglow orange. We’re sticking one in my girlfriend’s purse for that rare occasion when we forget our other reusable bags. My only worry is since they’re nylon, you can’t exactly recycle these things like you can the Green Bags many retailers are using now (which are NWPP #5). Luckily ChicoBag has a recycling plan in place to repurpose their bags and any others for low income families.

Now I just need to order a sport cap for my Klean Kanteen when I’m out on my bike and I’ll be good to go.

Update on Boca’s green certification

June 15th, 2008 • chatter, environmentalism

I just found an update, or rather more information, about the move to seek certification via Boca Raton News. It seems that for Assistant City Manager Mike Woika grabbing the lowest hanging fruit is OK. The city is applying for ‘silver’ status which is the lowest certification available from Florida. I’m amazed this level even exists, it only requires applicants to meet 20%-40% of about 221 areas of certification. So the city only has to meet 44 points of certification to just squeeze by? I’m fairly certain most booming cities can do this in their sleep and this is both laughable that the level exists and pathetic that our city is aiming so low.

Setting the bar low on purpose

While I’m not privy to any of the city’s plans, they’re more than likely setting the bar low on purpose. I can imagine that this is being done so that in case the city easily passes silver or even gold certification, it’ll look like a great victory. However, if it fails at the lowest level, it’s not that much of a failure when you put it in perspective that the gold certification requires over 60% of points to be met. From what it seems like according to the Florida Green Building Coalition (the non-profit actually putting forth the certification standards Boca is applying for), much of this is aimed directly at the local government and their own municipal practices although I do have a feeling the higher levels of certification will touch on or include many of the gripes from my previous post. I can’t be certain because the full standard is very vague in its language but admittedly, more than likely has to be vague. They cannot specify that you treat — or re-treat — reclaimed waste water in certain ways or use it in certain ways but the use of reclaimed water does earn you a point or two. I see that 1 point is awarded for LEED or FGCB certified buildings per 10% of owned or leased buildings. That’s great but I don’t recall there being any LEED buildings in Boca…yet.

Is it still greenwash?

By all means, yes. It’s greenwash up and down. One quip from Woika is that Boca makes “environmentally sensitive land acquisitions.” Of course they do. That’s why the government is slowly selling off conservation and reserve land to developers for strip malls and multi-family residences. Developers who are concerned about building out and building quickly, not building up (very few buildings in the entire city are over 4 or 5 stories) or building “green”. He also is quick to point out that Boca is a leader in recycling. I’d love to know where he got this bunch of BS. We can’t recycle electronics in this city, we have to go to Broward County or closer to West Palm Beach to do that. Many city-owned and privately-owned malls, parks, and other public areas lack any recycling bins/cans at all. Can you recycle your trash from the food court at Town Center Mall? Nope. Can you recycle your waste at Sugar Sands Park? Nope. That’s both city and privately funded. Are any of the trash cans scattered around the city at various bus stops and grassy areas designated for recycling? Again, no. To become a leader in recycling, you have to make it available to your populace, Mike. Just recycling at home isn’t enough and never will be. At FAU, all trash cans on the Breezeway (the main walk-way on campus, also functions as the campus’s main even area) are flanked by a plastic recycling bin and a paper recycling bin. Both are rarely used for their correct purpose and many of FAU’s on-campus students are from Boca or surrounding areas. Where’s the leadership in recycling there? Since it’s a state facility, the local government exerts its own influence but recycling isn’t one area it does so. However, we — my girlfriend and myself — are going to be working on this in the fall once school starts again.

How to help Woika get his head out of the sand

Residents can help by attending town hall meetings and calling for public dissemination of Boca’s sustainable or environmentally-friendly endeavors. We can also help by calling Woika’s bluff that Boca’s a “leader” in anything but bad drivers and snowbirds (and the go-to destination for old timers in movies). I wonder if he lives in the same city that I do. I frankly don’t see much sustainable anything going on. I don’t see LEED buildings all over the place or even LEED certification being promoted or incentivized (is that a word?). Or gas stations being urged to carry biofuels past E10 or E15 gasoline. There are no stations in this city providing any type of biodiesel, natural gas, hydrogen, or any other alternative fuel source. The most we have are Shell stations providing E10 gas by default these days but at $4.10 average cost per gallon, who cares? By now, we all know that food-based ethanols are, simply put, “pissing on your shoes” in terms of weaning anyone off oil. Why doesn’t the city build more sidewalks, bike lanes, or provide free premium parking for alternative energy source cars? FAU will be providing those in the fall for anyone driving a hybrid or an EV car; personally they should include motorcycles and scooter as well since they’re both very efficient. Or what about sponsoring city-wide bike rallies to increase public awareness of riding a bicycle to work? Most of the city’s Hispanic and Mormon population already have this down pat but everyone else? It’s a lost cause without education rammed down their throats. Increasing public awareness, public and city culpability and accountability will do more for sustainability than a certification will.

I sound like I’m coming down pretty hard on my home of the last 4 years, and I am for good reason, but at least they’re attempting a step in the right direction. My hometown is still stuck somewhere between blacks getting integrated in the 60s and the 80s. Or the town where my Mom lives is some kind of odd mixture of farm culture circa 1940s and early 2000s glitz of strip malls. I’m very interested in where this certification will go but only if Boca’s government truly puts themselves behind it and they make it a green reality instead of greenwash.

Boca seeks Florida Green Certification

June 13th, 2008 • chatter, environmentalism

According to the Sun Sentinel, Boca wants to be certified green. I think I must be seeing things. First I saw a Tree City USA sign for the Arbor Day Foundation and now this. Why am I shocked?

This is all greenwash.

A Tree City? Sure, why not.

Boca isn’t green at all and the city sure as hell isn’t a tree city. Recently, the city approved and built a new library out on US 441, right above Yamato. Great, I love libraries but there’s a problem: the library is surrounded by a HUGE parking lot and the land is completely devoid of trees. The parking lot is large enough to park probably 300 or 400 cars but the library itself doesn’t have the capacity to hold that many people at all. I used to drive past this part of Boca everyday for work and it was a beautiful forest. Now it’s marred by this gigantic parking lot of a tiny library. So for this tiny library, they cut down a few thousand trees. Great!

On the corner of Military Trail and Butts Road, the Lynn Group recently wasted land and money to erect a new multi-story business building. What was the cost? A small forest. Why was this move stupid? There’s a multi-story business building right behind it that was completed three years ago and still isn’t full. Now they plowed a whole bunch of trees to build another useless building. I also drove past this forest on the way to work two years ago when I worked on that side of town. The now gone forest was actually a park. How sad. Drive north on Military Trail about 2 or 3 miles and you’ll see another giant business complex on your right where another forest used to be. What’s the problem with it? It’s built on what was slated to be protected land for conservation. A few acres of trees plowed for another building the city doesn’t need. Many older buildings in the city are demo’d and built over which is both good and bad. Good because most of them don’t need current building and hurricane codes. Bad because they could be brought up to code and repurposed for a lower cost

Green madness

Now we have the green certification gig. The city claims to be making strides in things like recycling and environmental awareness. Can someone from city council please point these efforts out to me? More than 75% of the city does not recycle and businesses are not required, in any way, to recycle. The city has no facilities to recycle any used electronics or batteries — but we can go to Broward Country to do that…except in Deerfield Beach where you can’t recycle out-of-city goods. The city loves urban sprawl, they strongly adhere to “Build out, not up” and it’s pretty obvious. Instead of building more multi-story apartment complexes for housing, the city nearly mandates everyone to stay under 3 or 4 stories and happily approves new building developments on our ever shrinking available land. They’re even selling off protected and reserved conservation land for development. How is that green?

How about the bikers?

Boca Raton also touts itself as “bike friendly” which it most certainly is not. Just to get to the gas station at the end of Camino Real road (where I live), I actually get to cross Camino Real three times and Powerline Road once. Why? Because only one side of Camino Real has a sidewalk (no bike lanes here) and it’s on the north side of the road. However, the light for crossing the road and the crosswalk are located on the southeast side of Camino and Powerline. Once across Powerline Road, we have to cross Camino again because the gas station is on the north side of the road and this time: there’s no crosswalk or crossing light. How in the hell is that bike friendly? It only gets worse the farther west you go in town.

Or how about how Palmetto Park Road, one of our major lifelines in the city, has bike lanes on one side of the road that account for approximately 3 miles of the entire road? As soon as you cross over Military Trail on Palmetto Park, you get a bike lane until you get closer to downtown Boca and then it disappears. There’s no usable bike lanes on the road before Military Trail and no bike lanes after crossing Dixie Highway. That’s very unfortunate because a lot of people bike along Dixie Highway and US1/Federal Highway since Federal Highway is home to most of the city’s big name eateries and attractions.

What about the city government?

The newly elected mayor says that being green is one of her “top priorities” and that’s great but it’s certainly not enough since she still tools around town in a gas guzzler. Does she plan on offering incentives to businesses who want to use solar power or other alternative means of power? Probably not. Or any help to those who want to try and offset ‘heat island effect’? Again, probably not. While ‘heat island effect’ is not that big of a problem in Boca just yet, it will be in the future. There are not enough businesses clumped together to be a major source of heat islands as it stands now. Is the city government trying to cut down on paper waste by going paperless, even partially? Nope, paper is cheaper than using paperless office methods…for now. There are plans slated to increase mass transit in the city but they’re just not enough as it is now. There are not enough routes nor stops in this city and using mass transit is almost to the point of a joke, going just a 3 short miles can take 2 hours.

I’m sure they’ll be trying to make strides to fix this but given Boca’s image of being a ritzy town, they won’t do a lot or any efforts made will fall short of being helpful. While we have no need or space for a subway, we do need more bus routes and higher visibility (and usability) of cabs. We need more bike lanes and more traffic efficient intersection lighting. We need more city parks that have trees other than palms and more drought-resistant grasses. The city’s use of reclaimed water needs to be focused more on use in generating power than watering the grass in the city — all of the reclaimed water areas I know of are only used for grass irrigation. Waste Management needs to start using garbage to generate power at their plant on the Turnpike although, I’m fairly certain this is in the works.

The Solid Waste Authority of Palm Beach County needs to introduce “no sort” recycling along with consumer-friendly plastic bag recycling. There are hundreds of cities around the nation already doing this, why aren’t we? I routinely sort out everyone else’s recycling because they’re not educated by the SWA on how to properly sort. The people in my apartment complex see our recycling bins as extra trash cans and always throw their trash in there, the property management is not interested in fixing this despite my complaints.

What can residents do?

At this point in time, not a lot. Other than going to town hall meetings and holding officials accountable, there is not much we can do. Holding anyone accountable will be very difficult since many city officials are deeply ensconced with area developers and make more money off selling off precious nature reserve land than they do in saving it for nature. Since a large portion of the city’s residents are in multi-family residences or housing complexes, I’d say over 65%, we can’t install things like solar panels or micro wind turbines. And those that can are stifled by housing association rules. After Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma leveled most of the city, the city workers were out cleaning up downed trees only to replant them and replant grasses, they were highly focused on re-beautification and still are. I’m happy they were pulling down the ficus trees since they’re illegal to replant in Florida but they replaced them with just-as-insecure palm trees. Why not oaks or cherries or even magnolias? There’s a lot that could’ve been done back then to green the place up and replant for beauty.

I’m going to find out when the upcoming town hall meetings about the certification are and I plan on going to see how the officials can justify something they’re not really doing. I understand greenwash and I understand what the city isn’t doing to make this a cleaner place, I’m interested in their arguments on how they are greening it up around here.