Earth Wise

A look at our changing environment.

You are here: Home / Archives for shared

shared

A recycling lottery

By Leave a Comment

Getting people to recycle isn’t always easy.  The bottled beverages we buy at the supermarket often require a small deposit that we can get back by recycling the bottle, but often, we just don’t.

Researchers from the University of British Columbia tested the idea of giving people returning bottles a small chance of winning a big cash prize instead of a 10-cent deposit return.  The result was that people recycled 47% more bottles.

Changing how we reward recycling made a big difference.  When given a choice between a guaranteed return and a possible large reward, many chose the lottery option.  When people were randomly assigned to one type of reward or the other, those in the lottery group brought in almost three bottles for every two returned by the other group.

This isn’t a new idea.  Norway has a recycling lottery, and their bottle return rate is close to 100 percent.  The way it works there is there are reverse vending machines in grocery stores all over the country.  The revenues generated by the machines is split in four ways:  34.5% of the gross revenue goes to the Red Cross; 35% goes to the people who bring in their bottles in the form of winnings in the lottery; 9.75% goes to the stores for managing the machines and the lottery; and 10.75% goes to the operating company of the Recycling Lottery.

The Canadian experiments demonstrate that a recycling lottery could be effective in more places than Norway.  However, it shouldn’t completely replace the guaranteed refund option, since some people depend on it for income.

**********

Web Links

How lottery-style bottle returns could transform recycling

Photo, posted July 9, 2011, courtesy of Mr.TinMD via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Neighborhood geothermal energy

By Leave a Comment

Residential geothermal energy makes use of the constant, year-round temperature of the earth below the surface to efficiently provide both heating and cooling for a home.  In the summer, the cool earth beneath a house sits at about 55 degrees and can be tapped into with a heat pump to provide cooling.  In the winter, that 55-degree underground expanse provides a much warmer source of air to heat instead of the often freezing-cold air outside.  Geothermal systems are appealing because they use far less energy than other sources of heating and cooling.

Using geothermal energy to heat and cool buildings is nothing new.  But after years of planning and months of drilling into the ground, the first neighborhood-scale geothermal heating and cooling project has come online in Framingham, Massachusetts.

The project ties together 31 residential and five commercial buildings that share the underground infrastructure needed to heat and cool them.  This sort of shared geothermal system has previously been used on college campuses and similar places, but never before across a neighborhood in the United States.

The $14 million project, built by Eversource, broke ground in June 2023, and comprises 90 boreholes or wells drilled 600-700 feet underground. Approximately 135 customers are connected to the system, including low- and moderate-income customers, apartment buildings, a gas station, and a kitchen cabinet showroom.

A total of 13 states, including Massachusetts and New York, are considering pilot projects or advancing legislation that would allow gas utilities to develop networked geothermal heating and cooling.

**********

Web Links

First-in-the-Nation Geothermal Heating and Cooling System Comes to Massachusetts

Photo, posted September 30, 2019, courtesy of Stephen D. Strowes via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Capital Region Community Solar

By Leave a Comment

New York’s Capital Region is getting a major new community solar farm.  A community solar farm is a solar power installation whose output is shared by multiple community subscribers who receive credit on their electricity bills for their share of the power produced.  The primary purpose of community solar is to allow members of a community to have the benefits of solar power even if they cannot or prefer not to install solar panels on their own property.

US Light Energy has broken ground on the Sugar Hill Solar Farm, to be located on 40 acres of land on the Sugar-Hill/Sugar-View Farm in Clifton Park.  The 7-megawatt, ground-mounted solar project will include nearly 20,000 solar modules.  When fully operational later this year, the facility is expected to produce more than 8.6 million kilowatt-hours of energy a year.

The farm will be part of New York state’s Community Solar Program, and the electricity it generates can be supplied to customers anywhere in National Grid’s existing distribution system.  Residential and commercial properties in Clifton Park will have 30 days to subscribe before the solar energy generated by the farm is opened to the general public.  Subscribers of community solar farms typically save 10% on their electricity bills.

There are already community solar programs in operation in several Capital Region communities, but this is the first one in the Clifton Park Area.  Apart from providing savings on utility bills, community solar allows consumers to support clean, locally generated power with little or no upfront costs.  Not everyone is in a position to put solar panels on their roof, but community solar is increasingly an option for New York residents.

**********

Web Links

Construction begins on 7-MW community solar farm in New York

Photo, posted March 19, 2012, courtesy of Kate Ausburn via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

WAMC Northeast Public Radio

WAMC/Northeast Public Radio is a regional public radio network serving parts of seven northeastern states (more...)