akbeancounter’s Recent Comments

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  Reuse, then Recycle

  eram: When properly done, frying is plenty healthy.  By properly maintaining the oil temperature and not overcooking, steam pressure from within the food keeps the oil on the outside, so very little oil actually gets into the target food.  Besides, blood serum cholesterol levels have been more clearly linked to saturated fats (like butter) and trans fats (shortening); veggie oils commonly used in home frying are far more heart-friendly.

  Before disposing, I'd suggest reusing first.  If you've been managing your oil temperature correctly, you should be able to strain, store, and reuse the oil several times before it gets funky.  Signs that the oil is past its prime are funny flavors and odors, an unusually dark color (meaning lots of dissolved solids), and especially smoke.  Once oil heats beyond its smoke point, it breaks down chemically, and that doesn't taste very good.

  As for disposal, there's somebody in any decent-sized city who collects and reuses fry oil.  Call your recycling center for leads.  Giving it to local restaurants sounds like a good idea, but I doubt they'd accept it, because of either health code restrictions or the potential liability of accepting deliveries from strangers.

  [As nicksauvage stated, restaurants often do get paid for their used oil.  Processors can filter it and use it in biodiesel or cosmetics.]

  -- A.On Umbra on used cooking oil posted 1 year, 11 months ago 12 Responses

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  No guarantee, so just give up?

  [R]eplacing gasoline and diesel vehicles with electric ones will eventually be a climate plus -- assuming the electric power system gets cleaner over time. But that's a big assumption. The only guarantee of clean plug-ins ... would be a firm, descending legal limit on greenhouse-gas emissions.

  Just because it's not guaranteed, it's not worth pursuing?  The existence of "clean power" programs from local utilities shows clear consumer demand for renewable energy.  If customers ask for it, and agree to pay for it, it will be built.  Even coal power gets cleaner each decade, as better and cheaper scrubbing technology becomes available.  Even if it's not guaranteed, I think it's a pretty safe bet that the grid as a whole will get cleaner over time, just as it has been over the past few decades.

  I agree it's important to consider the negatives, and to consider the idea that this may just be a fad or a pipe dream like hydrogen cells, but you seem to be straining a little to find something, anything to criticize.

  -- A.

  Taking accounting to the extreme since 2004.

  On Giving up car-lessness for Rob Lowe's plug-in hybrid posted 1 year, 11 months ago 27 Responses

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  Print Boring Cards, Donate the Difference

  I worked for a bank that basically does what Aimee suggested, albeit for social reasons more than environmental ones.  Instead of sending the same lavish 5"x7" gold-foil-and-tissue cards that our competitors sent, we sent smaller and less elaborate cards, cards designed by a local artist and printed at a local shop, and donated the difference to a local charity selected by a panel of employees.

  The idea was pretty well-received; our customers understood that we cared, both about them and about our community.  I never once heard a depositor complain that our Christmas card wasn't flashy enough.

  -- A.On Umbra on corporate holiday cards posted 2 years ago 6 Responses

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  Translation

  The last Friday of every month, cyclists gather for a ride, often snarling traffic by accumulating in numbers that can't be ignored, to reclaim the streets on behalf of human-powered transport and at least temporarily reverse the traditional cars-first hierarchy of the road.

  In other words, to make enemies of those who might otherwise be friends, to declare one's self immune to traffic laws, and to serve as a soapbox for the wingnuts who give environmentalism a bad name.

  -- A.On Cycling group Critical Mass celebrates 15th anniversary, keeps on pedaling posted 2 years, 1 month ago 1 Response

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  Gee, pay more for non-toxic toys? I don't know...

  It's kind of shameful to hear the talking heads on cable news channels.  They acknowledge that lead paint probably isn't a good thing, but warn that Christmas might cost more if we insist upon toys that won't give our children brain damage.

  Swan said:
  Is this just another casualty of consumeritis??
  Absolutely.  We want it all, and we don't care how we get it.  America's children need toys based on their favorite TV characters (after all, the TV is their best friend anymore), and parents want those toys as cheap and as plentiful as possible.  Since we can't see the Asian and Latin American sweatshops, or the pollution generated by producing millions of pounds of disposable plastic junk, we can safely ignore them; I'm sure that if those things were important, somebody would tell us about it.On An illustration and explanation of today's tainted toys posted 2 years, 1 month ago 2 Responses