Consumers ignoring 'green' products
Despite growing concern over the environment, consumers are still not searching out 'green' devices.
In a report released this week by consumer electronics site Retrevo - via CNet - a full 42 percent of those queried about their buying habits stated that they were unconcerned if "a gadget I buy is not green."
A further 16 percent answered the question of "do you feel guilty if you don't buy a green [energy efficient or otherwise environmentally friendly] gadget" with the rather more considered "no, because price is more important." Another 16 percent felt a twinge of guilt for buying power hogs filled with deadly chemicals, but would "end up buying whatever gadget I like best" regardless of its eco-credentials.
According to the survey, just ten percent of respondents used eco-friendliness as their biggest decider when buying electronic devices - promising to "usually buy the greenest gadget." Another 16 percent always tried to buy the greenest gadget, which alleviated their guilt when - for reasons of price or features - they opted for a less environmentally friendly model.
In total, that makes a whopping 74 percent who would buy whichever gadget had the best features, the best price, or caught their eye - which contrasts with just 26 percent making an effort to choose the environmentally friendly models on offer.
The survey also covers proper disposal of old hardware - with the respondents split fifty-fifty between wanting cash rewards for safe disposal of old gadgets and wanting the process of recycling your old hardware to be made easier - and energy efficiency ratings, with eighty percent of those questioned knowing about - and, more importantly, trusting in - the Energy Star ratings.
Do you make an effort to pick eco-friendly hardware, or do you think it's all a waste of effort? What do you do with your old technology when its time has come? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums Replygreen harddrives are noticably slower( not that i have ever seen a green harddrive, most are black and silver ;) )
Not that I'm opposed to the idea of using less power. Things like using a 15w fluorescent light bulb as opposed to a 60w Incandescent bulb. That's what I call green.
when i built my home server at the end of last year i wanted a very powerful comp that used little power my drives are all green drives as i didnt need the extra 20MB/s read rate or the 3ms less seek time therefore Large green drives where perfect.
my mother board whilst still a p55 had the lowest power requirements of those reviewed all this has reduced the power to about 95W
but at the same time if i build a Gaming pc i will buy the products that match performance and cost so a 5850 / i7 regardless of the power requirements
I work for a marine lighting company and we are on average 90% more efficient than the replacement technology, have a better quality of light, last an enormous 50'000 hours, and puts out more light.
Shame we are moving from small scale to mass production pretty soon otherwise i would hit you guys up, we are moving to reduce unit cost in the next 4-5 months so mebbe then.
Spot on!
I gotta tell ya, I converted my entire house over to these pieces of junk and I have hated them ever since. 1: Their actual lifespan is completely random and never the 5+ years stated on the boxes. 2: They start out bright and nice, but then dim over time and eventually take up to two minutes to actually put out a remotely reasonable amount of light. 3: The color of the light is never the same between any company that produces them. 4: They rarely fit in any light fixtures other than large standard ones (even the smaller models which produce less light often have problems fitting into most light fixtures). And 5: They're filled with mercury and have to be disposed of in a very specific way. Good God, my neighbor dropped one in his garrage and poison control had him evacuate his family from his house for 3 hours while a hazmat team came out to clean and check the entire place. These things are completely worthless and I will never go back to them. once they get some cheaper LED light bulbs, I will be all over it, but until then, I'll sink my money into large appliances that actually make a difference. My high efficiency fridge, washer and dish washer all make a heck of a lot more difference than these anyway. My next upgrade is going to be to a tankless water heating system with PoU electric heaters (our power plant is more efficient at producing the power to heat water electrically than to use PoU gas water heaters, yes, I did the math). These are the things you should be saving for if you want to save energy to save money/trees/mother earth/Al Gore's pride/Unicorns, what have you.:(
By all means be more efficient, but base your marketing on that claim and not that you are green....
I`m all for reducing my impact on this earth both in consumption and financially, and therefore reward companies that drive toward this efficicency, but fully realise that unless i make a positive contribution to the human condition, me or my family are just going to be a drain until we shuffle off....! :)
(don't get me started on lightbulbs, I've got a shed where the light is on for 1 hour a YEAR and I'm forced to buy a bulb thats 10x more expensive, doesn't reach full light 'till i've left the shed AND contains electronics and mercury, instead of glass, tin and tungsten.)
EDIT: oh this was just about power consumption, not about the use of toxic materials etc, which I can't really tolerate. Then again, I recycle my **** responsibly, so it ain't a huge issue either.
So only a quarter of respondents are dimwits then ? Good to see humanity still has some small measure of hope.
I have just bought a 1.5TB EcoGreen though, it was cheap :)
The number 1 factor is quality, then money. For many others it will be money then quality. If green products save you money (power supplies) then people will care more as it benefits their wallet and the planet.
But I doubt many people want to pay extra for a product that doesn't poersonally benefit them in any way over a different product.
as i have said many times before, co2 is good for the environment. we should actually release more if we have the choice between it and another gas.
and "green" gadgets are 100% pure, distilled marketing BS. there is nothing, and i mean nothing, truthful about it. as a few of you have mentioned, "green" products (like CFLs) actually contain far more hazardous materials than what they replace, even if they do use less power. but using less power is not "green," it just saves you some money on your energy bill, and typically a marginal sum at that.
and then there is the whole assumption that "environmental friendliness" means 0 impact on "natural things." i find that definition absurd, because it overlooks the fact that we are, in actuality, part of the natural environment. *anything* we do is natural, even if it means the end of all life on earth. no one said nature was nice.
here is my personal definition of environmentally friendly:
1. preserve, and *actively maintain,* beautiful ecosystems, so that others can enjoy them, and perhaps great discoveries can be made.
2. do not poison the environment with long lasting chemicals that will prevent us (or other life forms) from making effective use of the space. that does not mean don't use those chemicals, just don't release them into the environment at large, keep them contained. of course the flip side of the issue is don't flip out and waste resources on trivial spills. a single CFL is not worth the resources of a hazmat team expends cleaning it up. it is not a danger to even people who are in the room when it brakes. know what your are dealing with, and when it actually is a hazard. don't just go off of the MSDS (check out here for why: http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/05/26/on_the_uselessness_of_the_msds.php)
3. don't worry about things that "nature" can handle on her own. most things that humans produce are pretty benign and are not worth the effort expended "cleaning them up." think biodegradable things, or things that are pretty much 100% inert as far a biological organisms are concerned, and don't try to "clean up" co2 at all, that is 100% wasted effort.
4. humans come first no matter what.
Utter rubbish. Pure energy company gibberish. I challenge you to produce a single, credible, non-energy company linked source that supports this (depending, of course on what this mysterous 'other gas' is)? I can give you a dozen or more from science-based sourced with no particular axe to grind that says the opposite. If you start giving me the 'co2 is good because plants need it to live' line, I swear I'm going to scream down my broadband line at you. Seriously! Think for a minute!
As far as green gadgets, the considerations are myriad, and generally go way beyond headline figures, so I think consumer choice takes a back-seat to government regulation on this one. Though I do try to go green when I can. There's also a performance issue, as someone mentioned before, and I'd rather cut back in other areas that play my games in slide-show-vision. Perhaps this is selfish, but at the moment it's the way I work.
*Sound of my kneeling down next to my phone socket and going 'AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH'*
You know what? Chilli peppers are human food, so lets pump tons of gas-form chilli pepper into the atmosphere and see what happens.
Just as you've never seen evidence to support global warming or not, you cannot be 100% certain as you've most likely never been to the polar ice caps and examined to test if increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere has an affect on the ice caps and so forth.
Not that I believe this theory, but as it stands for us it's true. Heck, I cant even prove the earth is round by myself. It's a pointless argument for us which may as well be followed up by people who can actually do something with it.
This is true, but it's more a philsophical argument than anything else, and you can take it further. The things that you sense are mediated by your senses, and do not represent the TRUE world. Indeed they never can. Consider the way we perceive things through a pool of water, for example: a few meter away from the 'real' position. In some senses this is what we are ALWAYS doing. However, on a practical level, you can't view the world at large in that way. It just doesn't work.
To draw this back to global warming, you need to look at the validity of the sources, to cross-reference one against the other, and against the other things already filed away as 'fact' in your head. Look at how far each argument is internally consistant, and the degree to which it is able to deal with the objections filed by the opposing camp. If you can do all that and come out thinking that 'CO2 is good' then I salute you, I truely do. For an enchore, you might wish to prove that black is white, though I'd watch out for zebra crossing :).
want to get into the whole "CO2 is a horrible pollutant" argument? i have written on ti before. here is the quote:
this is unedited from here:http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2010/01/08/nintendo-still-most-eco-unfriendly-console/1 in case you need context.
Has every one forgotten without improved CPU efficiency there would be a lot less OVER CLOCKING potential. Remember the old P4
now that was a nightmare to over clock because it got too hot v.s. i7 and i5 and i3 which use a more power efficient design, thus lowering the heat generated ie The w ratings...... So please don't let Intel see these posts I like improved design on my CPUs (same goes for GPUs too, the cooler the card runs the more I can overclock it).
One massive example of good ECO products is the Apple Laptop. (install win7 of course) Runs 7 Hours and has decent gaming potential, if only it where not so expensive.
Nvidia's Optimus will be called ECO too and that looks great. Think of it all the low power benefits for browsing and working and only turn on the main GPU for gaming. It should not only lower the watts used but might help those hot running GPUs to live a bit longer.
So I am all for eco and energy efficient products, but they must make a real difference Take LED back light TFTs for example. They are much more eco friendly then older models on two fronts energy consumption and Life time is at least 4 times longer.
As for people having problems with Florescent lighting. BUY name brand, like Osram or GE. They are much better and last longer.
If you don't like the color. Look for the ones marked WARM LIGHT or 20% larger spectrum or go full hog and get full spectrum florescent. LEDs are great but they are still too expensive, not a nice warm yellow and produce far too focussed light.
1W LED torch lights being the massive exception, their amazing got the LED upgrade for my MAG light. It is a world above the normal torches.
I guess LEDs are like Solar panels. Great if you can afford them......
Yes there are many new Diesels that are more effiecient then Hybrids Ford's Duratech TDI for example but it can shake a dirty rag at Tesla Motor's cars either model S or Roadster.
OK thats my rant over just please don't go around telling every one eco is bad for computers.
Intel or Jobs might hear you and then we are back to P4 and no competition in the internet enabled Mobile phones.
You're right, some companies are using the situation to boost up their sales. Now that we are experiencing serious environmental problem, most take advantage about it.
BTW, is there any way I can make my caviar black drive run a little slower to reduce noise? some sort of option in windows?
We are screwed anyway, methane being released by the permafrost is unstoppable now and will finish the job off.
Oh, and LucasLoC, nice argument however the adaptability of such a finely balanced system over time is very very small, so that 1-2% is plenty to do the job. Although i believe we have done it already. Oh, the medieval warm period, nice try. However this was a short term ramp up of natural variation, what we have now is a long term build up of CO2 etc and it is now going to help any 'natural' warming of the atmosphere be maintained.
but that just isn't true, that price difference is nullified pretty fast when you take idle power consumption into account, if the PC is running every day it could take only a year until you would have paid what you saved on the cheaper card for your electricity bill.
so you shouldn't only look on the product price but also the running costs, because that makes the newer generation cards much more attractive.
I don't care much about "green" either, but yes I do care about my bank account, and the electricity bill is a part of that.
most manufacturers do not publish the idle power consumption of their cards, but from what i understand they all run relatively low. i think it would take a considerable amount of time (years more than likely) to recoup the costs of the lower power cards. if i am wrong on that i would love to know about it, as i too am interested on the impact to my bottom line.
@fodder
the medieval warm period lasted for hundreds of years, and yes it was part of the natural variation. what we have now is also part of the natural variation (a warming since the little ice age), as evidenced by the 15 years of cooling that we have had (which, incidentally, matches the 15 years of reduced solar activity the we also experienced). your argument still hinges on a positive feedback loop, which i have shown does not hold water. taht 1 to 2% max retained radiation can easily be drowned out in the noise of natural solar variation, which has shown fluctuations of 10 to 15% across all spectrums.
your claim of a "finely balance system" also hold little wight, since science cannot even identify all the variable in play, let alone say for sure what future trends hold. what we do know it is is a very chaotic, non-linear system that has a number of know negative feedback loops that have prevented thermal runaway in the past, that co2 levels are not "at their highest levels ever", and a ther may be a few theorize positive feedback loops that don't hold water on closer inspection.
couple that with all the know benefits co2 has on the biosphere, and the argument for co2 being a "dangerous pollutant" look silly.
grats for having the guts to stand up for what you believe, but please attack my argument rather than reiterating a point that i have show to be invalid.
i don't doubt that. energy consumption is a big consideration when i make a recommendation on what servers to buy. but that is a little different, because you *are* talking about a huge farm of equipment. $20 more in energy consumption per year is hardly noticeable when you only have one machine, but it adds up to thousand or hundreds of thousands when you have a huge farm.
I just do not care anymore. If one or two large volcano's erupt for a couple of weeks, the co2 saved by two years of green cars is put in the air in a few days. People who think they can control nature or the earth are fools. All that green means is just another word for greed.
"but please attack my argument rather than reiterating a point that i have show to be invalid."
please alow me... well the tinternet and some scienists
" co2 is good for the environment"
not for all environments
Dissolving CO2 in seawater increases the hydrogen ion (H+) concentration in the ocean, and thus decreases ocean pH....it is believed that the resulting decrease in pH will have negative consequences, primarily for oceanic calcifying organisms. These span the food chain from autotrophs to heterotrophs and include organisms such as coccolithophores, corals, foraminifera, echinoderms, crustaceans and molluscs.
pitty the molluscs!!!
http://pangea.stanford.edu/research/Oceans/GES205/Caldeira_Science_Anthropogenic%20Carbon%20and%20ocean%20pH.pdf
" then there is the whole assumption that "environmental friendliness" means 0 impact on "natural things.""
please provide a reference to the idiot who said that - google only provides one reference ;-)
" in actuality, part of the natural environment. "
sorry but the use of the extra word natural defeats you here - I for one live in the built environment.
*anything* we do is natural
(just keep telling yourself that ;-) however you seem blissfully to be moving around using words in a way that doesn't tally with common parlance - http://www.thefreedictionary.com/natural
" even if it means the end of all life on earth. "
at some point this this is inevitably part of the natural flow (sun expanding) but lets not hurry it up... and if we were to prevent it... that would be un-natural.
" no one said nature was nice."
probably because they dont think nature has free will, unlike people - who can be nice.
"the medieval warm period lasted for hundreds of years"
occurred from about AD 800–1300 so yeah....
but current evidence does not support globally synchronous periods of anomalous cold or warmth over this time frame
so meah
evidence
"Global temperature records taken from ice cores, tree rings, and lake deposits, have shown that, taken globally, the Earth may have been slightly cooler (by 0.03 degrees Celsius) during the 'Medieval Warm Period' than in the early and mid-20th century"
http://www.geo.umass.edu/faculty/bradley/bradley2003d.pdf
http://ambio.allenpress.com/archive/0044-7447/29/1/pdf/i0044-7447-29-1-51.pdf
brrr bit chilly this warm period....
now regarding your personal definition of environmentally friendly:
I think it's relatively ok... though lacking in detail....
1 - make sure that they are large enough for migratory species, that limmited incursion (say a road) does not destabalise the ecosystem (say leading to drying and fire) etc... then fine heck its what were meant to do (but dont - see logging, palm oil plantations etc...)
2 - great... and so long as no one throws out the nice batteries, monitors etc... then there wont be a problem... just like with fridges and cfc's and ozone holes... oh...
3 - your quite right, bio degradable plastic bags are not something to worry about, thank goodness we use them, and nappies... we should be more like Napels these big rubbish dumps are a waste of time.
4 no - men come first (she was lying)
now onto the absorption spectrum of gasses.. well a nice explanation.. cant fault it upto... well I'll quote
"The anthropogenic additions of CO2 - in fact we will be practically doubling it by the mid of the century - will have a very measurable effect to the ability of Earth to radiate out of this 'window' precisely because the natural CO2 concentration is so low (compared to water) and the absorption is not yet saturated in these frequency bands so that any additional CO2 we bring to release is directly contributing to the darkening around the CO2 window in the absorption spectrum."
and reference
http://www.bwebcentral.com/articleswap/viewarticle.php?uID=466
and to join your blind model
"To come back to the example of the house: Imagine that you have 6 windows through which you can see out. 4 are covered by a stack of black blankets (water vapour). Now somebody darkens one of the last two open windows with a thin sheet of dark fabric. How would that affect your house? "
so yep I'm more worried regarding Co2 than I am an increase in water vapour as those windows are covered already.
"couple this with the fact that we did not run into runaway global warming when we left the last ice age"
??? nor did we have 6 billion people on the planet.... regardless the fact that feedback loops led the earth to become a snowball and destroy allmost all forms of life bigger than a couple of cells, then to a period greening, then back to snow, green, snow etc...
I'll skip your over-confidence in Augie Auer and your bizarre thoughts that science does not take place on computers (ah fortran - happy days)
and point out that your "special theory" is being researched by Sami Solanki,Peter Laut,Svensmark, Lassen, Sallie Baliunas, Peter Thejll, Peter Stott etc....... and I'm sure they appreciated your input.
Big question, what's worse, using a few KWh or throwing away polluted electronics instead of siliconoxide (glass)?
My bedroom light is on about 5 minutes a day. That's 30 Hours a year.
60W candescant bulb @ 30 hours = 1,8 Kilowatthours a year (let's say 2)
Bulb cost: 50 Eurocent.
Usage: 2 KWh= 40 Eurocent
Osram quality cf-lamp: 8 euro's
(actually it's more, but hey, humor me for the sake of arguement.)
Usage 10W @ 30 Hours = 0.3KWh
Usage about 6 eurocent
Lets say I use 1 quality Lamp for 5 years, and 2 incandecent (if you believe in lower lifetime)
CFL: 5 (year) * 6ct + 8euros = 8.30 euro's
Incandescant 5 (year) * 40ct + 2* 50ct = 3 euro's
SO ater 5 years, i throw away two pieces of glass instead of one piece of contaminated electronics, saved 5 euro's but "wasted" 8,5 Kwh.
Don't get me wrong, I've replaced the lamps that burn for over an hour each day, but the "ecofriendlyness" of having to replace EVERY single lamp is...wel, not true.
Incandescent lamps will disappear from the market over the next years.
i address the oceanic acidification in the other thread, but the recap is that a few more hundred parts per million in dissolved co2 is not going to change oceanic ph buy a noticeable factor, and certainly not by enough to cause any harm what so ever to ocean life. considering that ocean ph fluctuates constantly throughout the year by as much a .2 ph, the .001 increase caused but the additional co2 is irrelevant.
your assertion that the medieval warm period was cooler than the last century that is based on very dubious claims, especially since we have data that show that it was actually significantly warmer for at least all of Europe and North America. take a look at the archeology of northern viking settlements, as well as the reported types of crops for Great Britain. it is estimate that most of Great Brittan had an almost Mediterranean climate, significantly warmer than anything it has experienced in the recent past.
the problem with both of your linked to reports is that the data sets they are reporting on are not internally consistent. for example, the tree ring data being used is not compared to modern tree ring data, but rather to modern as-recorded temperature data. that is a statistical no no. proper methodology is to "normalize" modern temperature data with modern tree ring data, and then use the modern tree ring data to compare back to ancient tree ring data. as we can see from the data coming out of the East Anglia Climate Research Unit this was not done. instead the modern real temperature data was directly tacked on to the end of the older and less reliable tree ring data, with no attempt to translate the data from modern tree ring data at all. how that managed to pass a peer review board is yet to be determined, but judging from the many resignations we are seeing at both the EA CRU and the IPCC at the moment i guess that there was a lot of funny business going on with the "research" being done. but i am not one who says scandals should stand in for the actual argument.
getting back to the point, properly normalized data shows that, at least for the northern hemisphere, the medieval warm period was anywhere from 1 to 3 degrees warmer than our current times, depending on which temperature proxy you use. and before you trot out Michael Mann's infamous (and discredited) hockey stick graph, i would look into some of the controversy surrounding it and why it is given zero credit in scientific circles, despite some peoples instance that it is legit.
if you look further into the ice core's (somewhat controversial) data, you would see that the one thing that seems to be agreed upon is that there were many times in the far distant past that co2 levels were significantly higher than they were today, and that co2 levels seem to lag behind the temperature trends. not that consensus would be the yardstick of science mind you, but in the absences of a challenging theory we can use it as a working premise.
AGW theory does not currently enjoy a "scientific consensus," and even if it did that would not make it correct. what would make it correct is if all the predictions that the theory comes up with happen to be show in the real world data. which brings me to my next point: COMPUTER MODELS ARE NOT SCIENCE! science happens in the real world, with real measured data. computer models are useful for trying to understand real world data, and showing us where we might look next, but they are not real science. if your computer models do not agree with the real world data, you throw out the model, not the data. current climate computer models are notorious for not coming anywhere near real world data. we simply do not know enough about the systems involved to model them with any accuracy at all.
which of course brings us back the the co2 blocking ir light issue, and a direct reply to your analogy. if you take a look at the absorption spectrum of our atmosphere you will see that the two windows (co2) you proport to be open are in fact already covered with a thick blanket because the atmosphere is *already at near saturation levels* for the frequencies that co2 absorbs, with a significant amount of that absorption coming from water vapor. painting a covered window black is not going to significantly impact the light passing capabilities of said window. dumping more co2 into the atmosphere is not going to change its absorption spectrum, therefore it cannot impact global climate in the ways proposed by AGW theory.
and finally, as to the definition of "natural" it is all really a matter of schematics. assuming that we came from nature then what we do is "natural." after all, beavers build things too, and what they build is considered natural. just because we have bigger brains and build on a different level does not have to mean that what we do is not natural. in short, i do not agree with your premise that human ingenuity is "unnatural." we simply do what is natural with what nature gave us.
Oh I know I won't be able to avoid it, but it's not eco friendly and shouldn't be called that. :D
take bit-techs review of the 5750 for example.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2009/11/06/sapphire-ati-radeon-hd-5750-1gb-review/7
the 5750 uses about 29W less in idle than the 4850 in that test with about equal performance.
my computer is running roughly 12 hours a day, that's ~127kWh a year or with an energy price of 0,20eur/kWh ~25 euros and you can get a 5750 over a 4850 for less than that.
between the 5770 and the 4870 it's an even bigger stretch. the 5770 according to bit-tech uses 60W less in idle than a 4870 card.
with my computer usage thats ~263kWh or just over 50 euros a year.
nowadays the price difference between the new and old generation is not nearly as big as what I would pay for one year of idle consumption for one of those cards.