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Thank Yous Rockin' the Rivers
This year's Rockin' the Rivers in Three Forks was a huge, green success thanks to S.A.V.E's recycling efforts made possible by our community partners. This festival attracted thousands of campers to see a great lineup including Third Eye Blind, Dennis DeYoung of Styx, Eddie Money, and many more. S.A.V.E. bins were present throughout the entire venue, and S.A.V.E. volunteers worked with Pat Groves cleanup crew after each show to collect hundreds of pounds of aluminum cans, plastic bottles, cups, and cardboard from vendors. The S.A.V.E. information table was completely solar-powered thanks to Montana Renewable Energy Association (MREA).
A big thank you to those who made this possible! Thank you Headwaters Recycling Cooperative for providing logistical support and large recycle bins for the campsite, Montana D.E.Q., Power Townsend, Lowes, and Home Depot for providing recycling supplies. Thank you Thompson Distributing for providing transportation with their truck returning to Butte, and Pat Groves and his cleanup crew and all the great event organizers. Thank you for making this event possible! Recycling Rocks! We look forward to working with you all next year!

MREA Trailer
Thanks to Montana Renewable Energy Association, S.A.V.E. has on loan a renewable energy trailer equipped with solar and wind power demonstrations. For the next few weeks, S.A.V.E. will be set up at Alive@Five with this trailer demonstrating the uses of solar and wind energy through the components of the MREA trailer. The S.A.V.E. booth will also be handing out information on conserving energy in your home and lifestyle, and also be selling 'Be Green' t-shirts, CDs, and savemobile bumper stickers.

September Events
September is a big recycling month for S.A.V.E. Three events will be held during this month providing opportunities to recycle what is in your home. The Plastics Drive will run from September 5-9, 8am-7pm, at 1100 N. Last Chance Gulch (In field near parking lot next to Y.M.C.A.) S.A.V.E. will be taking three types of plastics; type 1 clear (water, soda bottles), type 2 natural color (standard milk jugs), and type 2 color plastics (orange juice, laundry, shampoo containers). Please rinse the bottles and remove all lids! Labels are okay, no oil containers, and please separate the bottles.

Erase your E*Waste will be held from Friday September 12th 3pm-7pm to Saturday, September 13th from 8am-1pm at the K-Mark parking lot at 1700 Cedar Street. Now is a chance for you to get rid of those old junky electronics that have been piling up in your attic or garage. Recycling keeps those toxic materials out of landfills and allows them to be reused. Erase Your E-Waste will recycle some items for free, such as computer towers, but most items will cost a nominal charge. Estimated costs and business preregistration can be found in this months water bill (Helena residents only), Savemobile.org, or 449-6008.

The third event S.A.V.E. will be sponsoring is Trash for Trees on September 27th from 9am-4pm. This event will be held at Northgate Plaza on Montana Avenue to recycle to raise money for planting trees and support expanded recycling. Items accepted will be newspaper/magazine, office paper, glass, corrugated cardboard, aluminum cans, steel cans, and cell phones, print cartrdges and some rechargeable batteries (from laptops or power tools). The plastics reyclcling will be provided by the S.A.V.E. Foundation and will include Type 1 Clear (Water, Soda Bottles), Type 2 Natural Color (standard milk jugs), and type 2 Color Plastics (orange juice, laundry, shampoo containers). Please rinse the bottles and remove all lids! Labels are okay, no oil containers, and please separate the bottles.

(Note: Volunteers are needed for all of these events)

Cinnabar Grant
The Student Advocates for Valuing the Environment Foundation has received a $5,000 matching grant from The Cinnabar Foundation for the second year in a row. This means that upcoming donations will be matched. S.A.V.E. is embarking on a major fund-raising effort to bring in its matching funds for this, its largest grant to date. This is a great time to support S.A.V.E.'s effective efforts to make Helena and Montana more sustainable. Donate to S.A.V.E. today and your contribution will have twice the impact.

Thanks!

- The S.A.V.E. Foundation
P.O. Box 1481
Helena, MT 59624

Labels: recycleing in Helena

The S.A.V.E. Foundation, 501(c)(3)

Labels: 2008 Student Advocate Awards, Carroll College energy costs, electric vehicles, fuel costs, graywater system, Helena electronic recycling, light bulb recycling, recycling at CHS

Neighborhood Electric Vehicles by AmeriCorps VISTA Kim Degner

Just noticing electric vehicles myself over the past couple of months, I am very excited to write this article not only to educate myself more on this simple transportation alternative, but also to reach out to others exploring the opportunity to learn more about the amazing world of NEV's or Neighborhood Electric Vehicles. NEV's are engines that run on batteries, and while may not be able to travel quite as fast as your standard automobile, yet, can do pretty much everything else you would need a motorized vehicle for. They are also less toxic for the environment through zero emissions and its small dependency on fossil fuels. In fact, with its simple battery operated engine, the driver does not have to worry even about oil changes, which can lead to toxic substances in our water and air.
Instead of adding up miles on a standard car, that has to be pumped up with expensive and dirty fossil fuels every couple hundred miles, an NEV only needs a fraction of this cost by simply plugging the car into a standard outlet at the end of the day. And on those days that the weather conditions may not be suitable for my personal favorite, the bicycle, an electric vehicle can be equipped with windshield wipers and even heat. While an NEV cannot be driven say from Montana to Minnesota (they are not allowed on highways) this is the perfect vehicle for driving around town, which most of our trips may include such as running errands or just short commutes to work.
NEV's are designed for traveling short distances and at slow speeds especially in urban areas where air pollution and traffic may be a problem. NEV's are emission free and are more compact than a regular vehicle, which makes them really easy to park, and provides more space on the road. An NEV can be as simple as a golf cart and can contain features up to the luxury of a standard car such as mirrors, turn signals and tail lights, windshield and doors. Street legal NEV's include the ZENN (Zero Emissions No Noise) electric car, which is gaining popularity through its zero-emission status and low-cost and easily accessible energy sources. With modifications, the electric cars have the potential to go 50-70 mph, but have a 25 mph federal restriction. In Montana, however, you can now legally drive the ZENN 35 mph, the speed limit on many streets through town, and even drive this speed on roads up to 45 mph. The S.A.V.E. Foundation is working to allow the ZENN to go faster and make it more practical for the average Montanan through policy work and environmental advocacy. The electric engine lasts 500,000 miles, but only gets 40 miles on a full charge, which takes 6-8 hours. The car can be plugged into a standard outlet at home to recharge even just overnight.
Even electric trucks are available for purchase. A small electric powered truck was recently purchased from EcoAuto Inc. of Bozeman to do maintenance work around the Capitol Complex here in Helena. The truck costs $17,695 and runs on an electric charge of 70 cents per day and will soon run off of solar powered batteries from the campus boiler plant. Under the truck's hood there are simply six batteries for the truck with a seventh for heating and air conditioning.

Electric cars run on lead-acid batteries, which are similar to those in regular automobiles. Since car batteries are a sealed unit most are recycled in the U.S. Also, with no engine oil, or radiator fluid, the electric engine is less toxic and the carbon lifecycle impact is much lower. This means that it uses less resources and has less of an impact on the environment to ultimately produce and use. In Montana, we currently use both hydroelectric and coal power for electricity, which means fossil fuels are used when we plug these cars into our houses. However, this equals out to only 10 percent of what we are currently pumping into our cars. And if solar or wind energy is used to get the electricity generated in your home, your car could virtually be fossil fuel free. The advantages of the electric car clearly make it an understated option to many commuters around town. And while we still need our regular fossil fuel cars to leave the city, a lot can be done to make the electric car a more viable option. With community interest and the work of S.A.V.E. we will soon forget about miles per gallon of fuel and be able to lessen the impacts we have on the environment on a daily basis. We can instead work towards making electric cars even more efficient and enjoy the simplicity of the vehicle we need just to get from point A to point B.

*Photos Above (Top photo to the left: Gov. Brian Schweitzer uses a ZENN electric car as a desk while signing a bill allowing the vehicles on Montana roadways earlier this year. From left, State Sen. Bob Hawks, D-Bozeman, Ron Gompertz of Eco Auto Inc., SAVE Director Matt Elsaesser and SAVE lobbyist Tyler Evilsizer look on.)
(Bottom photo to the right: the MILES electric vehicle is plugged into any standard 110V outlet for a full charge within 7-8 hours)

There was an incredible turnout for our July plastics drive. Each successive drive keeps collecting more plastic, even though we have now shifted to more frequent collections. The three bins which the city lent to us were all full within two days. We were able to hold out for the whole weekend, thanks to some Sunday morning ingenuity and a makeshift chicken-wire bin. Also, we'd like to send a big thank you to City-County Sanitation, who dropped off an extra bin midway through the collection. The totals are in: we collected nearly 12,000 lbs. pounds of plastic in 5 days. Thank you, Helena!

S.A.V.E. finished its March plastics collection last Friday. We recycled almost 11,000 pounds of plastics, a new record! The bottles were split about evenly between type 1 clear (water, soda, juice bottles), type 2 natural color (standard translucent milk jugs), and colored type 2 plastics.
We had a consistent stream of cars coming to and from the event all week, and were especially busy during the weekend. Thanks to our crew of volunteers who meet, greet, and make it all possible!

The next plastics collection is May 2-6!

Labels: helena montana, plastic, plastics recycling

Every gallon we buy at the pump affects our environmental, economic, and national security. A significant percentage of our transportation fuel is shipped across oceans and supports unsavory regimes. All of it emits climate-harming carbon into the atmosphere. Our choice at the pump is neither simple, nor consequence free. Reducing these consequences starts with driving less, choosing fuel efficient cars and trucks, and selecting the right alternative fuels. When we select alternative fuels, it is vital that we see a full accounting of their environmental merit. This can best be done through Low Carbon Fuel (LCF) accounting as recommended by the Montana Climate Change Advisory Committee. LCF Accounting includes all "energy inputs and carbon outputs from production to consumption" in transportation fuel. In other words, policies regarding alternative fuels should promote increased efficiency and decreased carbon intensity.

LCF Accounting is the best way to determine which alternative fuels have environmental merit. It measures carbon emissions not just by what comes out of our exhaust pipe, but also the carbon produced over the lifetime of the fuel. LCF Accounting considers all the energy inputs of a fuel: extraction or growing, refining, and transportation to the pump. This accounting system tracks the indirect costs that we pay for fuel. A gallon of petroleum gasoline produced in Montana provides the same amount of useful energy as a gallon of petroleum derived gas from the Middle East. However, the Middle East gallon will have taken much more energy and emitted more carbon because of transportation. The resulting measurement gives us the "carbon intensity" of the fuel we are putting into our vehicles, telling us how much carbon was emitted to yield a set amount of energy at the pump.

The nation is looking for alternatives to gasoline. Recent reports regarding Hydrogen Fuel Cells have created much excitement. Liquid biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel have the potential to allow America to grow its own fuel, which in turn will reduce fuel costs, greenhouse gas emissions, and dependence on foreign nations for fuel. However, not all alternative fuels are created equal and many have unintended consequences. Corn-based ethanol requires energy from fossil fuels. In Asia, rainforests are destroyed to provide cropland for biodiesel made from palm oil, causing the loss of "carbon sinks" and biodiversity. Today, using electricity to produce hydrogen for fuel cells is less efficient than using the electricity directly in a standard electric car. LCF Accounting is a tool that can ascertain which alternative fuels being promoted are those with real environmental benefits.

LCF Accounting gives us a necessary baseline to understand the environmental impacts of our transportation fuel choices. It is a vital tool for citizens making choices at the pump and for policy makers looking to lower the carbon intensity of fuels. Fueling your car is not simple. The true costs are often hidden. Let's make it easier with Low Carbon Fuels Accounting.

[Learn more at S.A.V.E. Low Carbon Fuels Page]

Comment on the Climate Change Action Plan

Let the citizen voice be heard! The Environmental Quality Council is seeking public comment on the recommendations by the Montana Climate Change Advisory Committee. Which areas are important? You can fill out as much or as little of the survey as you want--all comments are counted. The Public Comment Survey is open until February 29th.

Thanks!

- The S.A.V.E. Foundation

Labels: low carbon fuels, montana

S.A.V.E. invites the Helena community to join us at Taco del Sol (Downtown Walking Mall, Helena) for a presentation and discussion on recycling lead by executive director Matt Elsaesser. Event will start at 7:30p.m. and is free and open to the public. Call 406.431.0815 for details.

Thanks

- The S.A.V.E. Foundation

S.A.V.E. Daily Habits: Winter 2008



Past Issues of Daily Habits


The S.A.V.E. Foundation, 501(c)(3)

Labels: alternative energy, gray water systems, helena montana, low carbon fuels, neighborhood electric vehicles