http://www.care2.com/greenliving/10-simple-and-cheap-green-ideas.html
10 Simple (and Cheap) Green Ideas
By Annie B. Bond
Being green can be easy after all!
Browse through this list of simple solutions designed to save energy and reduce carbon emissions for the planet, and at the same time save you money.
10 Tips to Save Energy (and Money) in Your Home
A whopping 46 percent of home energy use is, umm, energy loss! In other words, no productive energy use at all! Here are simple ways of reversing this, mostly by changes of habit.
Thanks to climatecrisis.net and The Home Energy Diet (New Society Publishers, 2005), for many of the carbon savings figures.
1. Each degree you turn down the heat saves 3 percent of heating costs, while each degree you raise the temperature of your air conditioner saves 3-4 percent of cooling costs. By changing the temperature by 2 degrees all year, you can save about 2,000 pounds of C02 a year.
2. Cook with a slow cooker or a toaster oven (or even a solar oven!) to reduce electrical use from kitchen appliances. For a meal that requires one hour to cook in an electric oven, and which uses 2.7 pounds of C02, a crockpot uses 0.9 pounds of C02 for seven hours, a toaster oven takes 1.3 pounds of C02 for 50 minutes, and a microwave only 0.5 pounds of C02 for 15 minutes of cooking. A solar cooker requires NO C02!
3. Switch to a laptop instead of using a desktop computer and cut three-quarters off your electrical use. Turn off the laptop at the end of the day.
4. Switch to cold water washing and save 80 percent on energy used for laundry and save an estimated $60 a year. Hang dry your clothes instead of using the dryer and save 700 pounds of C02 a year.
5. Plug anything that can be powered by a remote control or that has a power cube transformer (little black box) into a power strip, and turn it off, and/or unplug, when not in use. (Power cubes are 60-80 percent inefficient.)
6. Turn off the lights when you aren’t using them and reduce your direct lighting energy use by 45 percent. Stop using heat-producing halogen lamps (they can also be fire hazards). Install occupancy or motion sensors on outdoor lights.
7. Switch to compact fluorescent from regular incandescent bulbs and use 60 percent less energy per bulb and save 300 pounds of C02 a year.
8. Wrap your water heater in an insulation blanket and save 1,000 pounds of C02 a year. Insulate your hot water pipes.
9. Use public transportation whenever possible, carpool, shop locally, and ideally switch to a hybrid or energy-efficient car (if you haven’t already).
10. Keep your tires inflated to improve gas mileage by 3 percent. Every gallon you save also saves 20 pounds of C02 emissions.
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148 comments
add your comment »Good tips, though I would add a caveat. We live on a small farm; we also do not use paper products that are typically used in an American home. Therefore, in my laundry might typically be dirty rags, napkins used at the table, handkerchiefs, as well as all the dirty clothing we generate. I need to ensure that things like napkins and hankies are truly clean and free of any animal fecal matter, etc. I use a warm water wash , cool rinse.
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Annie, Thanks for the nice post. I have also heard about filling your automobile tires with Nitrogen like they do in race cars.
http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/1713452/
This article outlines how a small town in NC with a 60 car police fleet cut their fuel and maintenance costs by about 10% by switching their tires to nitrogen.
Brad
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Nice to see your page. I am also working towards fighting Global Warming.
I have created a website www.carpoolglobal.com that helps people to contact each other and carpool together.
Our motto is to encourage people to go for carpooling to save fuel consuption, check pollution, reduce traffic congestion etc..
Hope you like it too.
Regards
Kislay
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Living Green
Here is my comment:
Computer or your PC consumes more electricity than a laptop computer. Encourage employees use laptops in office and save up to 90% of energy.
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Living Green
Here is my advice:
Computer or your PC consumes more electricity than a laptop computer. Encourage employees use laptops in office and save up to 90% of energy.
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You can build your own solar cooker in about an hour using the plans found here: http://solarcooking.wikia.com/Fun-Panel
Tom Sponheim
Solar Cookers International
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For things that you have to buy online, like plane tickets or that great deal from Wal-Mart, try shopping through www.weshopgreen.org.
They earn a commission from your purchases and donate their profits to green organizations. You can give back where you once thought you couldn't!
Every little bit helps! www.weshopgreen.org
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We use rechargeable batteries for small appliances like keyboards , have a wind up /recharge flashlight. Use daylighting and solar gain to warm the house in the day when it is cold out and have insulated drapery liners(20$/25$ Lowes per window)saves fuel/ac, found and sealed as many holes where wires and pipes come through, all this has made the house more comfortable, warmer in winter and cooler in summer. I don't take the plastic bags at the market I have canvas ones, they are washable too. Yes I do use boxed garbage bags, but only use one for a week even longer, as I compost kitchen scraps for the garden. I use toaster oven, covered pots, very low heat(fresh greenbeans do not come out well in the nuker, hard veggies I steam on very low heat , some times just the heat from the vent in the stove top when baking, this works on my toaster oven too. We recycle, reuse, repurpose and buy least packaging. We also get eggs, honey, and beef from local farmers, and we have an organic garden. I too and disabled and cannot do heavy lifting and am lucky to have a partner who can. We also catch water for gardening limited but we plan a system to catch more rain and another to reuse grey water. We did not start everything at once, but have developed the habits over a few years. I make every trip to town count doing grocery, recycle drop. We use a kero heater, with some luck and planning I can install a solar water heater/pv pump for it too this summer -$50month on power.
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I wouldn't do anything to endanger your health. If you sort the recyclables as you go, it tends to help. That way if you go to the store, you can just chuck the plastic bag with the recyclable plastics in the recycling bin - no separate trips to the recycling center. Either that, or you could ask a family member or neighbor to do it for you on their next trip to the store.
Also, I tend to reuse the plastic bags I've given when shopping. I just crumple them up and stick them in my purse, so I almost always have one and don't accumulate as much as I otherwise would.
Another way to get rid of/reuse things you don't want is to join Freecycle (http://www.freecycle.org). Just join the one in your area, post what you want to get rid of and if anyone wants it they can come get it. Also, if you want something, post a request, and someone might do the same for you. I've gotten rid of some unwanted worn out furniture this way. If it's free, people don't mind getting something and fixing it up. That way, less goes into landfills, and you can always ask for pickup/drop off if the person is willing. :)
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A lot of the green tips are for able bodied people and what I want is some advice on how to be as green as possible. I need to stay warm & my mobility is seriously hampered if I have to wrap up instead of keeping the heat on, it's a pain but what can I do? Also, I find if I turn off all the lights and just turn them on as I go I tend to fall a lot more often, so again something I have problems with. On the recycling front, I try and try but as I have no-one to help me get rid of the stuff it tends to mount up & unless some kind person takes it to the recycling centre eventually I end up chucking a lot in the bin. Will someone please help us less able to be green too?
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