Carl Hutzler's Blog

Now and again I need to get rid of something as opposed to re-purposing it.  I wonder if I can recycle it instead of trashing it. Maybe an old CRT computer monitor or the last bit of latex or oil paint or maybe a battery or cell phone. You get the idea. And while I know a lot more today than I used to in terms of where to recycle this and that, I still like to know the closest place and/or the cheapest place to go. Enter earth911.com

The site has a very nice search (with suggestions for terms) along with your zip or address. And the results are very good. Not perfect, but very good for my area anyway. But the best part is that when you click on a result (e.g. Office Depot), they have the details of the recycling program along with how many items you can bring per day, any restrictions (broken vs working) and costs. This is very useful.

PS: And the best part of the site is it is done in WordPress, Kenny ;-)

We got a new heat pump in November and it was one of these ultra efficient new systems (R-410 type). I was surprised this month to see a bill seemingly exceed any bill I had ever paid for electricity before (we have an all electric house). So I went back 9 years and plotted out our usage as well as the per kWh costs. I found that we were using about as much as we had over the last 3 years or so…and given that this winter has certainly been cold or maybe colder than recent winters, I guess things are looking good. And we certainly have a lot more always on electronic stuff in the house these days than in the old days. Maybe we should unplug some stuff and be a little greener? We do have CFL bulbs in 90% of the house, new windows in most of the house, and I did the weather stripping this year. But jeez, that is a lot of kWh.

The below graph is a plot of usage (kWh) by month in blue with a 2 month moving average trend line (scale in kWh on left axis) compared to the cost per kWh in red with a linear trend line (scale on righ axis in $). Wow has the cost of a kWh gone up a lot! 250% in 8 years which is like 15% a year. How about that for deregulation inflation. (click image for larger)

I could not believe my eyes last week when I saw a pair of Bose 901 Series V speakers go up on Freecycle. The freecycler said they “needed some repair as one of the drivers was bad”. I responded immediately and tried to explain how handy I was and how I could likely fix them. An hour later, she responded and said I could have them. I jumped in the car…

When I got home, I didn’t even hook them up. I called Bose and they said for $100 plus shipping (one way), they would refurbish them to like new condition and ship them back for free! So $142 later, I have them back and they are awesome! Well, I guess a $1,400 pair of speakers should sound great :-)

Complete with sales receipt (from 1984, purchase at a Naval exchange for $800), two manuals, and stands.

If you don’t freecycle, you are throwing away stuff people want and likely missing out on stuff you would normally spend money on…perhaps BIG money.

Freecycle.org