Sugar

For many years I noticed that people in developing countries like their coffee or tea very sweet, usually pouring an average of 2.5 tea spoons of sugar per cup. 12 years ago I used to put that much sugar in my coffee, but then I slowly went down, by half a table spoon every couple of weeks until I finally settled at 1 tea spoon per cup. Now I find tea or coffee with just 1.5 tea spoons of sugar extremely sweet.

Whenever I met someone who put too much sugar in their tea I would always tell them how I was able to cut down and I still find my tea sweet. I always told this out of concern for their health since refined sugars are bad for health and artificial sweeteners might not be helpful with weight loss in the long run, not to mention their alleged bad health effects.

But the fact that a reduction in sugar consumption might be also good for the environment did not hit me until today. As far as use with tea or coffee goes, the potential for reduction in developing countries is huge, assuming five cups per day and 1 billion adults, the annual saving could be as large as 18 million tons, almost 10-11% of total world demand. This means that land areas devoted to sugar cane or beet production can be either used for something else that is more worthwhile or reforested.

Will there be a financial loss for sugar producing countries? I doubt it as price is likely to go up a bit and compensate for the lower demand. Also as mentioned above there will be additional land available for other crops.

Cats and Dogs

Millions of Americans have pets and millions are pondering which pet to get, a cat or a dog. The arguments for and against are somewhat well known.

Cats require little or no toilet training, are independent, do their own thing most of the time, and unless de-clawed can damage furniture and carpets. Still they are cute and have a "sixth sense".

And while dogs require months of toilet training, they have many things going for them; they are very loyal, protective of their owner, and smarter than cats. There is a good reason why it is considered man's best friend.

But these difference aside, I wanted to answer the most important question and that is the environmental one. Here cuteness or intelligence do not matter. Because both animals are carnivores, cats would win hands down as they are much smaller than dogs and therefore consume significantly less food than dogs. If 80% of dog owners switched to cats over the next 10yrs, there would be tremendous environmental savings.

CPU Power Usage Regulation

Who says that government can not do good. Back in the 70s the government made targets for car mileage and this resulted in tangible improvements in fuel economy and reduced the environmental impact by millions if not billions of tons of CO2.

So if the government can regulate fuel economy, why can't it regulate CPU or computer platform TDP? And unlike the situation with cars there are only a handful of high end CPU players out there: AMD, Intel, IBM, and SUN. This should somewhat be easy, and can be done in a reasonable manner assuming there is political will.

Previously I suggested that CPU manufacturers, voluntarily reduce the max TDP over time. But now I think that a little push by the government might go a long way towards kick starting things.

A hypothetical time line for quad core CPUs might go something like this:

*2010, max TDP==> 120 W
*2012, max TDP==> 110 W
*2014, max TDP==> 100 W

Similarly for dual core CPUs:

*2010, max TDP==>55 W
*2012 max TDP==>45 W

And so on.

In order not to hurt CPU companies so much, the government might decide to regulate certain market segments and not others. For example, consumer CPUs, but not servers.

Another way would be for government to impose extra taxes on energy inefficient CPUs. Alternatively it could give tax breaks/tax credit for energy efficient CPUs; Individual states can increase sales tax on computer costing more than 800$.

This same kind of logic can also be applied to GPUs, chipsets and other computer components like hard drives memory, and power supplies.

For GPUs the break down would not be in the number of cores but based on market segment. For example:

*Enthusiast==> 150 W
*Performance==> 110 W
*Mainstream==>75 W
*Entry level ==> 45 W

And these numbers would be reduced by 10 watts every two years, similar to what I proposed for CPUs.

Shaving And The Environment

I know this might be a stupid post, but as I was shaving the other day, I started to get ideas about how shaving can impact the environment, so in someway, this is not so different than my previous post on hair.

For starters, I think using disposable razors is a big no no. Probably as I write this, millions of these went into the trash. And I somehow doubt that the plastic in them is being recycled.

The second piece of advice that I wanted to mention is choosing a none disposable razor. And here, I would recommend choosing a current generation one as cartridges would be available for many years to come and they tend to last longer. Not to mention the fact that current generation razors tend to produce a smoother shave.

I really do not feel comfortable in recommending an electric shaver on two grounds: a) the price and b) the fact that it uses electricity or batteries. I would like to see an environmental impact study for both electric and regular razors. On the good side, electric shavers do make use of shaving a cream so there is some sort of saving there.

Speaking of shaving cream, one should get the largest size available largely due to fact that a larger size would use less packaging materials.

One last thing that I should mention is doing away with shaving all together and letting your beard grow, this might sound like good advice, but in reality you would use more soap to wash your face. So this actually needs further study.

Green Computing

I have been using computers for the last 22 years, so I know a thing or two about them. Here is my own guide to green computing.

• If you have a single core 90nm P4 Prescott or an Athlon XP, now might be a good time to replace your processor/computer.
• Choose a green operating system that is low on CPU usage and has good power management features. For servers, Red hat Linux is an excellent choice.
• If you are just an occasional gamer who does not mind playing games at lower quality settings, chose a computer with integrated graphics. At the time of this writing the best integrated graphics chipset is AMD's 780G.
• Chose a computer with an energy efficient processor, this costs only 10-20$ more.
• If your CRT monitor is 5yrs old, now is a good time to replace it with a lower power LCD. However, resist the temptation to oversize your LCD, unless your work demands it. For most people a 17-19" LCD should be fine.
  
• Chose a medium end dual core CPU or a low end quad core CPU. Unless you run scientific software, or games, these processors should be more than adequate for years to come.
  
• Set the power management on your computer to max. Have the shut down of the monitor occur only after 5-10min of no usage.
• If you can wait to buy a new computer, wait until early next year. By then all CPUs from Intel and AMD should be built using a more power efficient 45nm process. Furthermore DD3 should be cheaper, but more importantly should consume less power than DD2.
• Get a laptop instead of a desktop if your work does not require a lot of horse power.
• Chose software that is low on CPU utilization. This would require some trial and error, as currently there is no standard that tells you how many CPU cycles each program consumes on each processor model or the total average energy in watts per task(for example a virus scan or watching a movie.)
• If you have multiple servers, go for virtualization and server consolidation. Additionally, make sure that the platform you purchase will have socket/memory type longevity.
• Chose computer RAM that has a low voltage rating.
• If money is not an issue, go for a high efficiency power supply.
• Buy computers and LCD panels with an energy star compliant rating.
• Choose a chipset or graphics card that can do HD(HD and Blu ray) decoding. GPUs are more efficient at HD video decoding than CPUs. Nvidia and AMD offer very efficient decoding in this regard.
  

Cars

Every green/enviro site has their own set of recommendations for car energy saving, so I wanted to mention a few of my own:

*Nitrogen tire filling. This is somewhat controversial, some studies show it does not work while others do, it is really hard to tell, but on the off chance that it might work, I would recommend it.

*Energy saving tires, these can actually work. Not sure if there would be any additional savings if these are combined with nitrogen tire filling. But if there is, the total would be 7-10% more mileage.

*I have seen very few sites mention the change of spark plugs, but with current fuel prices, it might not be a bad idea to change them before they are due for change.

*If your car is 10 years old, and you drive in the city more than you do on the highways, then now might be a good time to get either a compact car with a small 1.4-1.6ltr engine or a hybrid. Hybrids from Toyota and Honda are an excellent choice.

From a few article I read, I have already seen a shift in demand to smaller engine cars and Hybrids. I hope that car factories can keep up with this shift.

Car Longevity

Say that I buy a computer today, for example an Athlon 64 5200+ x2, I can upgrade it in a couple of years with a somewhat faster CPU that consumes less power. Similarly I can replace the graphics card inside the computer within 12-18 months with a twice as fast card that consumes less that what I currently have in terms of energy. The only worthy component that I can not replace is the chipset, and I really think that replacing it should be an option.

Anyway, what I would like to see is a similar upgrade path for cars, the ability, every 5-7 years, to replace the engine with a 15-30% more efficient engine. And I think this retrofitting should cost something like 1000-2000$ max. Such an upgrade path would be welcomed by a lot of people because they would not need to dump their "old" car every so many years or sell for peanuts.

Such an approach would also be helpful for the environment as the number of new cars produced would decrease. In this scenario the only people who would be slightly unhappy would be the automakers. But I do not think their profit margins would decrease much because they probably depend more on the spare parts business, and an older car is likely to need more spare parts than a new one.