Here we go again.  Just as you resign yourself to replacing the last of those dear old incandescent light bulbs with energy saving CFLs (compact fluorescents) you are being asked to jump ship again — this time for more efficient, longer lasting LEDs (light emitting diodes).  Be brave. Hold your nose and take the plunge. You will be lowering fossil fuel use, cutting climate changing CO2 emissions and shrinking your electric bill, all at the same time. And, you will be in good company. 

     Our local Stop & Shop in Kingston has just changed all their own fluorescent lighting to LED. To get the lowdown I met Mark Macomber at the store. Mark is the Energy Project Manager for Stop & Shop’s parent company, Ahold USA. 
     All 572 fixtures in the sales area of the Kingston store have been replaced. The change to LEDs, Macomber estimates, will slash their electricity consumption by a whopping 625,000 KwH (kilowatt hours) yearly. That’s saving as much electricity as turning off the lights in 367 houses in Duxbury for an entire year. If you prefer to think, instead, in terms of climate change impact, the changeover will reduce CO² emissions by over a million pounds a year, assuming the electricity is generated by fossil fuel.  As you might suspect, there is a financial motive as well behind this change, an anticipated yearly operating cost saving of close to $100,000 plus a bulb replacement saving of another $5,000. To maximize the efficiency of the new LED lighting system, it has been equipped with wireless controls making it easy to dim lights whenever conditions permit. The Kingston store is not alone. Ahold has partially or completely retrofitted 100 of its stores in 11 states with LEDs and has adopted other energy saving techniques such as equipping rooftop air conditioning units and condensers with variable speed drives and installing solar collectors at 38 of its locations. Combined, they insure that the supermarket chain will achieve its 2008 goal of reducing its carbon footprint by 20% by the end of 2015. 
      Enough about supermarkets. Let’s turn to something about LEDs nearer and dearer to your pocketbook, namely, “How much can I save by switching to LED bulbs?”  Because I can’t count the number of light bulbs in each of your households, I’m going to have to work with averages. Yes, yes, I know you are above average, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this column.  
     Until recently, the average American household had 47 incandescent light bulbs, ranging from 25 watts to 100 watts. To simplify, let’s say they averaged 60 watts each.  That’s a total of 2820 watts (2.82kW) per household. If you were to replace those incandescent bulbs with 9.5 watt LEDs (which deliver equivalent brightness) you could reduce that 2820 watts to 446.5 watts.  At present the cost of electricity from NSTAR is 15.04 ¢ per kWh (kilowatt hour). Assuming that you use your lights about 150 hours a month (5 hours a day x 30 days), your monthly electricity cost for lighting with incandescent bulbs comes to $63.62 (2.82 kW x $0.1504 x 150 hours). By converting entirely to LEDs it is possible to reduce that monthly lighting cost to $10.06
     Now before you rush out to Lowes or Home Depot or your local electrical supply house or hardware store for LEDs, only to suffer sticker shock, let me elucidate. LEDs are costly compared to incandescent or compact fluorescent bulbs. A 9.5 watt LED replacement for that 60 watt incandescent is going to cost about $6 each, if you buy in 6-8 packs. That’s a premium of about $4 per bulb over the cost of an incandescent or compact fluorescent. But when you calculate the LED’s yearly cost, including electricity savings and bulb replacement savings, a different picture emerges. By the time your 60 watt equivalent LED celebrates its fourth birthday it will have saved you enough on your electric bill to have paid you back the premium you paid for it plus an additional $9 in replacement bulb savings. Over the next 10 years of its estimated life it will save you another $11 in electricity plus an estimated $ 22 in bulb replacements. Your total payback?  $46. Not bad for a $6 investment - especially when you consider that you’ll also be slowing down climate change and cleaning up the air we breathe.

So, how goes the battle to eradicate those disposable plastic bags or at least to decimate their numbers? And, why is it so important to get rid of them? Let me answer the second question, first.

     Last year in the America, we used about 12 billion barrels of oil to produce over 100 billion polyethylene bags. In doing so we managed to pump another 45 billion pounds of CO² into the atmosphere, speeding up global warming. Only 3% of those bags were recycled - and where do you think the rest of them went? That’s right. The other 97% are littering the earth.  I’m not just referring to far-away places like Bahrain, Benghazi or Bangladesh. Think Duxbury. Duxbury roads, Duxbury open spaces, the street you live on, Duxbury Beach. Not to mention the oceans where these bags kill 100,000 whales, seals and turtles a year.

     Locally, the largest number of disposable plastic bags are dispensed by our supermarkets. And, to their credit, they have been making an effort to encourage reusable bag use and to be unwasteful in using the disposable kind.

Brian Houghton, V.P. of the Massachusetts Food Association, the grocery market trade group, showed me a report from the 380 some stores they represent, detailing a 33% reduction of plastic and paper bags use from 2007 to 2012. Encouraging, but we don’t yet know whether the reduction is continuing at a healthy rate because reports for 2013 and beyond are still not complete. 

            Of course the disposable plastic bag problem could be solved in one fell swoop if Massachusetts were to enact a statewide ban on their use. A bill to do just that (H696) and another which would only reduce usage (S.359) were proposed in 2013, but both died in the legislature’s Ways and Means Committee. A subsequent bill limiting use (H787) has been filed, but given the fate of its predecessors, well-funded plastic bag industry opposition and the fact that the Massachusetts Legislature fails to enact 95% of the bills proposed to it, would you be willing to place a bet on passage? Neither would I.

            Five Massachusetts towns, however, including Brookline, Cambridge, Great Barrington, Manchester and Nantucket, have enacted their own bans on disposable bags.  Each town has different regulations creating a nightmare for the supermarket chains, one which will only get worse if the trend continues.

        Recognizing that near term statewide action is unlikely and that a ban by t Duxbury would have no effect on the two large supermarkets in Kingston, Sustainable Duxbury decided to tackle the problem directly with supermarket management.  So far, two meetings have been held between a Sustainable Duxbury group headed by Janis Owens and representatives of Stop & Shop, Hannaford and their parent corporation, Delhaize America.

      Lots of ideas to eliminate or reduce disposable bag use have been generated. One proposal to eliminate disposable bags entirely, credit customers with 10 cents for each of their own reusable bags at checkout and charging them 10 cents for each reusable plastic bag furnished by the supermarket, didn’t get much traction because supermarket representatives felt it would engender too much customer resistance. Another idea, to create an express check-out lane for customers with their own reusable bags is receiving consideration. Supermarket representatives were especially enthusiastic about training cashiers to ask customers at check-out if they wanted reusable bags, giveaways of reusable plastic bags, having Sustainable Duxbury volunteers in the stores to encourage customers to switch to reusable bags, and other in-store events to promote more reusable bag use.  One of these has already materialized.

In recognition of Earth Day both Hannaford’s store manager, Steve Beane and Stop & Shop’s manager Joe Laflamme hosted reusable bag events in their stores in which Sustainable Duxbury Volunteers, Janis Owens, Fenna Hanes, Marion Thayer, Jeanne Penvenne, Mike Wilson, Jim Savicki, Paul Maybe and Dick Rothschild gave away 450 attractive reusable bags contributed by the stores. It was an opportunity to hand out information and, one-on-one, to encourage hundreds of shoppers to opt for reusable bags.

Maybe we are seeing the beginnings of a partnership between the management of these supermarkets and the community, designed to combat the scourge of disposable plastic bags. Let’s hope so.