Presentations from the E2Tech "Myth Busters" Event

On February 16, 2012, E2Tech hosted a forum entitled, "Mythbusters", where experts were on hand to de-bunk some commonly held assumptions that may not serve us any longer.

The first presenter was Laurie Lehmberg of Texas Instruments. She flew in from Texas to bust the myth that all industrial chemicals are harmful. Her point was mainly that the users of highly-purified industrial chemicals can "recycle" their chemicals after being used by capturing and re-selling them to other industries who require a lower level of purity.  Check out her entire presentation here.

The day's second presenter was Anne Hewes of EcoMaine, who busted a few myths about recycling. Some of these were that recycling is difficult, recycling vehicles use a lot of energy, single-sort recycling is painstakingly labor-intensive, space for recycling is too scarce, recycling is bad for the economy, there is no market for recycled materials and recycling contributes to greenhouse gases. WRONG! Read why here.

The third presentation featured those budding efficiency stars, Andy Meyer and Dana Fischer of Efficiency Maine, debunking some commonly held myths about building science, lighting efficiency and appliances.  It turns out that houses can breathe through ventilators called air-to-air heat exchangers that keep more of the heat inside than our current breathing method of letting air in and heat out through cracks and crannies.  More information about this can be found on the Efficiency Maine website, on the Maine Indoor Air Quality Council's website and right here on Green Energy Maine's efficiency blog.

As a side note, Efficiency Maine has instructions on its website for how to safely dispose of a broken compact fluorescent light bulb, should you ever need to know. The mercury exposure is equivalent to eating one tuna fish sandwich. 

To learn about future forums from E2Tech, watch their website and our events calendar.