Pack in. Pack out.

The Presidential Inauguration Committee is hoping that the estimated 2 million people who come to see Barack Obama sworn in as the 44th president of the United States on Tuesday will do like good hikers everywhere do: leave Washington, D.C., as clean as they found it.

Thousands of people have volunteered to lend a hand in what is being touted as the “greenest inauguration in history,” and for many of them that will mean picking up trash, recyclables and even horse manure along the Mall in Washington after Obama takes the oath of office.

“Just as we are committed to making this the most open and accessible inauguration in history, we are also committed to making it the most environmentally sensitive,” Inauguration Committee spokeswoman Linda Douglass told FOXNews.com.

“This will be the greenest inauguration in history, because we have tried to be mindful of the potential effects on the environment that a large crowd could have. We are trying to do everything we possibly can to return Washington, D.C., to the same state in which we found it and to reduce our own footprint as much as we can.”

But critics say the committee’s attempt to be environmentally friendly is nothing more than political posturing and basic good behavior.

Furthermore, they say, if Hollywood stars and bigwigs really cared about the environment, they’d choose not to come to Washington at all. Rather than generate tons of emissions in their private jets and gas-guzzling SUVs, they’d have a better chance of saving the Earth if they just stayed home.

The Institute for Liberty, a conservative think tank, estimated recently that the millions of people coming to the inauguration will generate a half-billion pounds of carbon dioxide — 260 million pounds from the 600 private jets that will come to Washington, and another 260 million pounds from personal vehicles.

It says the pollution amounts to more than 575 million pounds of CO2, which would take the average U.S. household 57,598 years to produce.

The institute did not say how it derived its figures, which are debatable. But the bottom line is undeniable: the more people who fly or drive to Washington for the inauguration, the more fuel that is consumed and the more emissions that are dispersed.

“You can’t on the one hand lecture about emitting CO2 and believe it’s a problem, and on the other hand create such vast amounts of CO2 almost needlessly,” said IFL president Andrew Langer. He said the anticipated celebrity odyssey to the nation’s capital exposes the hypocrisy of Hollywood’s environmentalist crowd and negates the “green” message of the inauguration.

Christopher C. Horner, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of “Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed,” agrees.

“Green means not doing it in the first place,” he said. “It doesn’t mean buying a [carbon offset] certificate to wave around and paper one’s conscience with.”

Horner said environmentalists who choose to attend inauguration activities and applaud the event’s “greenness” are “engaging in generally phony activities to add some gauze to the obvious hypocrisy.”

He added that the inauguration activities won’t have a huge environmental impact anyway, and the inauguration committee’s teams of volunteers who will be cleaning up trash are just picking up after themselves.

“They don’t deserve a merit badge for it,” he said.

But Ryan Smith, EPA liaison to the Presidential Inaugural Committee, said attention to recycling and trash removal does make a difference.

“I think we’re doing a lot of good things. I’m really proud of some of the creative and innovative answers that the PIC came up with when confronted with budgetary concerns and research concerns and security concerns,” Smith said.

“They really did a lot of things to weigh the cost and the benefits of doing some environmental good, and ultimately this is a public awareness issue. They’re taking a lot of steps to do things very publicly that show that they are taking steps to mitigate some of the environmental concerns.”

The committee plans to have 100 of its 18,000 volunteers sweeping the parade area to collect trash and recyclables. Metallic heat sheets that are being made available for parade participants who suffer the effects of the cold weather will be donated afterward to the homeless. And volunteers will follow parade horses — picking up what they leave behind so it can be sold to a local farm.

The National Parks Service and the Trust for the National Mall are also providing recycling cans up and down the mall — along with about 5,000 portable toilets — for the millions who attend.

The Environmental Working Group has studied existing CFL light bulbs in depth and published a detailed report called “Lighten Up in ‘09″ showcasing some bulbs that contain a fraction of the mercury in other CFL’s and can last up to 2 to 3 times longer. 

An Environmental Working Group investigation has identified 7 bulb lines made by Earthmate, Litetronics, Sylvania, Feit, MaxLite and Philips that trump the rest.

A quick one-page summary of this report is available for download here.  A helpful cheat sheet to take to the store the next time you need to see the light. 

In case you haven’t heard of the merits of CFL bulbs, they conserve energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants…a CFL uses 75 percent less energy than its incandescent counterpart, lasts up to 10 times longer and prevents more than 450 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere.

Over its lifetime, a single CFL can save the consumer $80 or more, depending on local electric rates.

We have received several questions that we would like to address:

Where is the program available?
The program is available only in the United States (excluding Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico)

Can municipalities apply?
A municipality can certainly apply if they can demonstrate current projects/events that demonstrate eco-sustainability or environmental awareness for the community.

What is recycled from the CFLs?
The entire CFL is recycled including: the glass, mercury powder, plastic, metal and the internal circuit board. NLR is a fully permitted lamp recycler. For more information on NLR click here

How do I apply?
It is simple to apply. Just click on the “apply now” button at the top of the homepage and fill out the brief registration form. Once your registration and email are confirmed you can lo into the member’s only area where you can download a application or fill one out online.

If there are any other questions post them here and we will try to respond to them as quickly as possible.

KEEP THOSE APPLICATIONS COMING!!

by Claire Rees, Western MailWalesOnline

1. Freecycle (www.freecycle.org)

It’s not just for first-time buyers and hard-up renters furnishing their house for free – you can put on a request for the outfit or types of clothes you’re looking for, then sit back and wait for the offers to come in.

Also handy for getting rid of your own unwanted garb after a New Year clean-out.

2. Howies

The Cardigan-based ethical clothing brand have just launched their Hand Me Down range – a collection of women’s and men’s clothing made from durable materials like organic tweed, all guaranteed to last a minimum 10 years. We also love the cute print on their bio-degradable jute shopping bag, pictured right, £4.90, made from jute grown in farms in West Bengal. www.howies.co.uk

3. Do the sums

Experts say making your home more energy efficient can cut your bills by £340 a year and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 1.5 tonnes.

One of the biggest wasters of household energy is the cursed standby button – if people in your house are still refusing to end their love affair with it they also have a gadget that can control and monitor all your appliances from any location online.

Work out how much you’re wasting with the online calculator at www.byebyestandby.co.uk

It’s also worth visiting www.energysavingtrust.org.uk for tips from the non-profit organisation.

4. Warehouse

One of our favourite classy high-street stores, Warehouse gained green ticks when they launched Warehouse Cares at the end of last year with a range or organic jersey pieces made from recycled fabrics which have their colour removed and are then re-spun into new silks – including the cute dress pictured left, £70. www.warehouse.co.uk

5. Envirophone

There are plenty of charities that can benefit from recycling your phone (like www.recycle4charity.co.uk) but you can also make some cash for yourself in the process.

Jamie-Lee uses www.envirophone.com and has already made £70 from her unwanted hand-sets. You can also trade them in for Argos vouchers.

6. Oxfam Unwrapped

Buying a goat’s nothing new, but prices are now more competitive and the choice on offer wider if you want to use a loved-one’s birthday as the chance to help someone in a third world country.

Oxfam Unwrapped lets you pay for clothes for people who have to leave their homes in a hurry in a disaster – for £20, the fashionistas in your life would appreciate the gesture.

Gifts start at £6 and there are also details online about letting the service take care of your wedding list. www.oxfam.org.uk

7. Cheaper chic

Look out for swishing parties where you swap your unwanted outfits for fab, and sometimes designer, stuff – credit crunch and enviro-friendly.

Or try www.seasonb4.com, where savvy customers can get up to 50% off.

And check new online jewellery rental www.blubangle.com to avoid spending your food budget on accessories you’ll never wear again.

The stage has been set for the imminent death of the incandescent light bulb in Europe. The United States is not far behind. Not everyone is thrilled, however.

And in a twist of rapidly advancing technology, the days of highly-touted replacement compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) are likely numbered, too.

Here’s the latest in the growing global controversy: European stores have stopped restocking some wattages of the traditional light bulbs as part of a voluntary withdrawal and a government campaign to force people to buy the newer, more energy efficient fluorescent light bulbs, according to the Daily Mail.

The real threat

CFLs emerged in recent years as a cure-all to the world’s growing energy demands. They have been highly touted in the United States, too, and the country is on track to eliminate incandescents, which eat up roughly a quarter of the electricity produced in the country, by 2012.

But CFLs contain small amounts of mercury that, over time, could build up in landfills and cause environmental problems. Few states and locales have recycling programs to handle the bulbs.

A study by Yale University researchers in October found that some countries will see reduced mercury emissions if they switch completely from incandescents to CFLs. Among them: China, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece, all countries where coal-powered energy generation releases mercury into the environment. Likewise, mercury emissions would drop in North Dakota, New Mexico and West Virginia.

But mercury emissions would rise in Alaska, California, Oregon, Idaho and several New England states along with South America, Africa, the Middle East and parts of Europe.

“Compact fluorescent lighting is an area where we’re really pushing this alternative and all these policies are being enacted, but we’re not looking at the potential unintended consequences of what we’re doing,” said study author Julie Beth Zimmerman, an assistant professor in Yale’s Department of Chemical Engineering and its School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

Robert Roy Britt is the Editorial Director of Imaginova. In this column, The Water Cooler, he takes a daily look at what people are talking about in the world of science and beyond.

This blog will be all about what is going on with G.A.P. and will have news and commentaries on issues of sustainability, the environment and everything green. Please feel free to log-in and join in the discussions.