money, money, money

One aspect of the bailout bill is that the US Treasury will have to print much of the money that we agreed to hand out to the banks. A few months ago, I researched the life cycle of producing cold hard cash to determine if it were “green”.

I decided to republish that article just as a friendly reminder that money does not grow on trees. In all honesty, it grows on a GMO cotton bush. Anyway, the article is below.

have you ever thought about the process of making money. And, I don’t mean how to increase the value in your checking account. I am referring to the process of actually making cold hard cash.

I had never thought about it until Ali… he asked for the credit, I’m giving it to him….mentioned it to me and broke down some of the steps of the process. Of course, my ears perked up and I decided to research it. We all think we know the process… ink, paper, printing, cutting, distribution. But let’s look at it from a carbon footprint point of view.

PAPER

I think researching this provided the most interesting bit of information for me. The actual note is made up of 75% cotton and 25% linen. I bet your first thought is that you are happy we aren’t cutting down trees. Ha! Linen is somewhat ecologically okay. It is made from flax, and is labor intensive to manufacture. However, in order to get the longest possible fibers it is hand harvested and it uses bacteria, not chemicals, to decompose the pectin present and free the fibers. These fibers are then woven into cloth and used accordingly. Given the rest of the data I found, let’s say this is the “cleanest” part of making money.

Cotton….what a very different story. I am not even sure where to start on this because I was in such shock when I started researching it.
1.) 80% of cotton production starts with GMO, Monsanto seeds. YOU GET THIS, RIGHT! If you do not support GMO, how it affects farmers, the EPA policies created in support of Monsanto and you make every effort to not financially support this company or comparable companies….TOO BAD! By spending cash you give to Monsanto and the like.
2.) Cotton is one of the top four largest industrialized agricultural industries, behind corn and soy, slightly above canola. U.S produces 19.2 million, 480 lb bales of cotton per year.
3.) It takes 20,000 liters of water to make 1kg of cotton. This is the equivalent to one t-shirt and one pair of jeans.
4.) 2.4% of agriculture is cotton, but it uses 24% of the world’s use of insecticide and 11% of world’s use of pesticide
5.) The agricultural process is bad to the environment through drainage practices and leaching into the soil, application of pesticides, extensive irrigation, dam construction for the irrigation.
6.) 73% of irrigated land comes from fresh water withdrawl. This is pumping water from clean sources to water the crops.
7.) In return, run off to adjacent water sources (wetlands, streams, lakes) contains pesticides, salts, fertilizers, all of which is contaminating out fresh water ecosystems and causing extinction of marine life.
8.) The impact of cotton growing destroys the soil and after time must be abandoned for new locations, leaving acres and acres of dead zones.
9.) 25,000 cotton growers in the US are subsidized at $2 billion per year.
10.) The equipment used is a cotton harvester which costs the farmer $150,000 to purchase. It holds 120 gallons worth of fuel.
11.) Undisclosed amount of labor costs, the fuel those laborers use to get to and from work, the medical issues because the cotton harvesters are dangerous.

And so on, and so on, and so on. And, we haven’t even started printing the money!

Not much to be found about the ink except that it is a magnetic, oil based ink.

PRINTING

The process of printing money is called Intaglio printing. It requires large equipment that is made out of metals and plastic. The metals are copper and zinc and used in the printing presses. The make plates with the image of the currency out of these metals, ink is placed on these plates and the paper runs by them to get the print. The plastic, as we know, is an oil based product.

There is an international law that allows each country to hold a monopoly on the production of their currency. Why do I mention this? Because we purchase our Intaglio printing machine, and the plates with the IMPRINT OF OUR MONEY, from China. Yep. China has the image of our money so they can make the printing presses we use. We pay them $30,000 per machine.

Now, we can factor in the cost of the two Bureau for Engraving and Printing locations. We have one in D.C. and one in Fort Worth. There is the cost of the two facilities:
1.) Resources needed for building Fort Worth and upgrades to D.C. facilities.
2.) Running the plant for money production on two shifts, five days a week; include labor costs as well as cost of running high speed presses for 18hrs/day.
3.) air conditioning/heating costs
4.) electricity costs
5.) employees and their respective carbon impact on the Earth
6.) Resources needed to store notes at controlled temperature

TRANSPORTATION

The money has to get from B.E.P into your hands, right?

Consider fuel costs and usage to get from each location to the Reserve Banks around the country.

1 round trip flight to a destination under 2hrs uses 500lbs of CO2
1 round trip flight to a destination about equal to 4hrs uses 1250lbs of CO2
1 round trip flight to a destination greater than 4hrs uses 2000lbs of CO2

That’s just the flying portion. You can also calculate the fuel costs and usage of driving the money in armored trucks. Keep in mind that these are not transportation vehicles for humans… this is not carpooling. This is paper.

BANKS

I can’t even begin to calculate the carbon footprint of a bank. First off, I have no idea how many banks exist in the U.S. and much of this will be generalization based off the bank I use. Most are probably, at minimum, 2000 sq ft. They more than likely have the air conditioning/heating units on close to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They employ, on the average, 25 people per branch who each drive their own cars and park in lots, that I view as a waste of usable land. At least at the bank I use, it is not even a covered parking lot, and is a black top, which I know is contributing to the increased heat of the Earth.

All of this to keep money in circulation. I haven’t even started researching coins, except to know that it costs us 3 pennies to make 1 penny.

Here is the life expectancy of our money:
$1……. 21 months
$5……..16 months
$10……18 months
$20……24 months
$50……55 months
$100…..89 months

This is based on our current population. The more people we have, the more money will be needed and therefore production will have to increase.

The US Treasury estimates that it cost 6.2cents per note to make our money last year. This is a cost of $571 Million dollars per year. TO MAKE MONEY!!

I am not by any means saying that we should all stop using cash. I would never want to guess what that could do to our infrastructure. I would also never want to limit the poor of our country that run their lives mainly on cash and not credit or debit cards. But in the interest of each of us being educated and making wise decisions about even the smallest things we can do to impact our carbon footprint, I felt this was an interesting exercise in breaking down a fundamental need of each American.

Maybe, now, when you go to the ATM, or pull out your wallet to purchase something, you will look at that piece of paper in a different way. Maybe you will see it as a GMO seed contributing to a corporation you choose not to support. Maybe you will see it as a product made by China. Maybe you will see it as the fuel cost to get it from the treasury to your pocket. I don’t care. I just think we need to start seeing it differently.

Some links:
information on environmental impact of cotton

yearly production of money