Update!
Another great example. I was in the hardware store the other day buying fluorescent lights (the regular tubes). Industries have used these lights for decades because they are efficient and cheap to operate. They also typically dispose of them properly. This way they save money and don't pollute the environment with mercury. There was absolutely nothing in the store associating these bulbs with being "green". As much as I hate the term, these would be the greenest. But most people don't use them in their home.
On the other hand, the "spiral" compact fluorescent bulbs are aimed directly at the home consumer. They aren't as efficient as the long tubes, but the advertisement SCREAMED about how green they were and how much money they could save you in the long run. In reality, almost nobody recycles these things properly meaning all that mercury is going into the environment. Very not green.
Not only that, but because of the popularity of the green fad, they were charging anywhere from $1.20 up to $5.00 for the exact same bulb! This type of price inflation for the popularity of making stupid people *think* they are being green infuriates me. Using regular incandescent light bulbs in your house, and throwing them in the garbage, and using a renewable-energy power company would be much better for the environment.
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I am just about fed up with the way commercial advertising is plugging the green movement. The average person is nowhere near intelligent enough to evaluate their carbon footprint, energy usage, or impact to the environment. Instead, big legal entities, corporations, governments, and institutions take advantage of the popularity and ignorance to make themselves look good.
Take the example to the left under consideration.
This is purely for PR. There is a reason this installation is one of the largest in the world. Equipment of this type is so expensive, and produces so little power, it typically takes much longer than the lifetime of the equipment for the equipment to pay for itself and generate an economical net positive.
The average person going to the gym is producing about 60 watts continuously. A trained athlete could get up to around 200 watts continuous output. *This number is sometimes cited as much higher because it is confused with how many watts the human body needs in order to run. Yes a person in vigorous exercise is using probably upward of 500 watts, but thats the energy required to run the human body, not the energy output by the human body.
The average flat-screen tv takes about 250 watts to run. No doubt there are about 5 TVs hanging in front of all those elliptical machines. That is 1.25kw.
If ALL 22 machines were being used by people generating 60 watts, the total of all 22 machines comes to 1.32kw, just barely enough to run those 5 tvs. The building is still consuming power to run the lights, air conditioning, and hot water heaters. None of this power is going back "into the power grid".
Electricity right now is about 10 cents per kw-hr. That means that with all 22 machines being used, the University is probably saving about 50 cents on their power bill every day. If you petaled hard for an hour every day, 7 days a week, and at the end of the month got a check for your power production, it might be as high as 20 cents. Less than a penny per hour - thats how much human-power is worth.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-environment, but your kidding yourself if you think man is destroying it. The most we will do is drown in our own sea of garbage while the environment is slightly altered. Life on earth will go on, but without man. So when you talk about going green, or saving the environment, understand what your saying. We are talking about saving ourselves, not Earth.
Sustainability is a much better term because it's not talking about the environment at all. Sustainability is about us, how are WE going to continue to live and thrive when we run out of fossil fuels. How are we going to grow enough food for the 10,000,000,000 people we will soon have?