Shopping with Energy in Mind

Introduction

Making purchasing decisions can be easy or hard. Your decision can be made easier or harder if you consider the product's embodied energy. Embodied energy describes the energy used to make a product and includes everything from growing and harvesting the raw materials to transporting the item to the store. Heavily packaged items have even more embodied energy because of the resources used to create the packaging materials.

A related consideration is the product's life cycle. Embodied energy pertains mainly to the creation of the item, but it's also important to think about what happens to the product after you bring it home. How much energy does it use? Can the item be reused or do you throw it away after one use?

Keeping all these energy-related considerations in mind does add a new twist to your purchasing decisions. However, these considerations not only help the environment, they can help your pocket book, too. Items that require less energy to make often cost less. If they use less energy at home, they save on your electricity bills. You only need to buy a reusable item once, compared to buying disposable items again and again.

Terms to Know

Embodied energy - The total amount of energy needed to manufacture a finished product from raw materials, including the energy used to transport the product.

Green Products - The term "green" is often used as a descriptor to identify environmentally friendly items.

Classroom Ideas

Guest Speakers

Click here to find contacts for guest speakers in your area.

Field Trips
1. Take students to a local factory to learn all the steps involved in producing a product. Have students create a chart diagramming the life cycle of the product, highlighting energy consumption.
Click here to find field trip ideas in your area.

Sample Academic Standards Addressed:

        Social Studies D.12.10. Analyze the ways supply and demand, competition, prices, incentives, and profits influence what is produced and distributed in a competitive market system.

        Agriculture F.12.1 Describe how the production, distribution, and marketing of food and fiber is part of a complex economic system

Activities and Lessons

1. Project Learning Tree, published by the American Forest Foundation, includes the activity "Resource Go Round" that helps students investigate the life cycle of a pencil.

    Sample Academic Standards Addressed:

        Science H.12.1 Using the science themes and knowledge of the earth and space, life and environmental, and physical sciences, analyze* the costs, risks, benefits, and consequences of a proposal concerning resource management in the community and determine the potential impact of the proposal on life in the community and the region

2. Have students research what qualifies a product as "green". They can locate products that are labeled green and identify criteria. Do any of the criteria include energy used during production?
    Sample Academic Standards Addressed:
        Environmental Education A.12.1: Identify questions that require skilled investigation to solve current problems cited in literature, media, or observed through persistent observations

3. Involve the class in making and ranking a list of products used in a typical day. The products can be ranked on level of energy consumption used during production.

    Sample Academic Standards Addressed:

        Science A.12.5 Show how the ideas and themes of science can be used to make real-life decisions about careers, work places, life-styles, and use of resources

         Family and Consumer Education A.2 (advanced): Analyze the personal and social significance of a family-related concern, such as what should be done to . . . make informed choices about consumer practices and products
 

4. Students can analyze advertisements to ascertain if energy is a selling point.
    Sample Academic Standards Addressed:
        Science C.12.7 Evaluate articles and reports in the popular press, in scientific journals, on television, and on the Internet, using criteria related to accuracy, degree of error, sampling, treatment of data, and other standards of experimental design

Student Projects

1. Challenge students to redesign a commonly-used product to reduce the quantity of its embodied energy. For example, can they use local materials to reduce transportation costs? How about using less or recycled materials?

    Sample Academic Standards Addressed:

        Science G.12.5 Choose a specific problem in our society, identify alternative scientific or technological solutions to that problem and argue it merits

Family and Consumer Education A.2 (advanced): Analyze the personal and social significance of a family-related concern, such as what should be done to . . . make informed choices about consumer practices and products
 

2. Involve students in an Energy Issue Investigation and Action Project.

3. Have students make a Science Fair presentation about their research. 

Support Materials

Web sites

www.coopamerica.org/pubs/greenpages/  The National Green Pages is a directory listing nearly 3,000 businesses that have made firm commitments to sustainable, socially just principles, including the support of sweatshop-free labor, organic farms, fair trade, and cruelty-free products.

www.energystar.gov The ENERGY STAR Web site features all kinds of information about products, homes, and businesses.

www.greenbiz.com Greenbiz: suggestions for combining environmental responsibility with business success

www.greenshopping.com/index.htm An online catalog that specializes in green products.

www.ucsusa.org Union of Concerned Scientists--search their site for shopping tips.

www.worldwatch.org/pubs/goodstuff An online resource for a "behind-the-scenes guide to the things we buy".

http://ibuydifferent.org/ Explore this Web site for stories on burgers to light bulbs and explorations around the impact of America's consumption choices.

www.newdream.org/consumer/index.php The Center for a New American Dream links web surfers to sites on food and clothing including fair trade chocolate and organic cotton.

Other Resources 

Blatt, Harvey. 2005. America's environmental report card: are we making the grade?
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Brower, Michael & Leon, Warren. 1999. The consumer's guide to effective environmental choices: practice advice from the union of concerned scientists. New York: Three Rivers Press.

Esty, Daniel C. & Andrew S. Winston. 2006. Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press.

Menzel, Peter. 1994. Material World: A global family portrait. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.

Robbins, Ocean & Solomon, Sol. 1994. Choices for our future: A generation for rising life on Earth. Summertown, Tenn.: Book Publishing Company.

Ryan, John & Durning, A. 1997. Stuff: The secret life of everyday things. Seattle: Northwest Environment Watch.

Scheckel, Paul. 2005. The home energy diet: how to save money by making your house energy-smart. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers.

Shook, Michael D. 1995. Mother Nature's shopping list: a buying guide for environmentally concerned consumers. Secaucus, NJ: Carol Publishing Group.

Cost of Cool is a video that helps students explore the environmental impact of being "cool": http://store.videoproject.com/cost-722-v.html