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10 Simple (and Cheap) Green Ideas
By Annie B. Bond, executive producer of Care2's Green Living content
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.
More on Reduce, Recycle & Reuse (78 articles available)
More from Annie B. Bond (3174 articles available)
129 comments
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- Nancy Lohman says
- May 11, 2008 10:25 AM
In Ohio, May and June are very mild. We completely turn the heat & air off. Later we have to use the a/c. Our gas bills are minimal during that time. www.NancyLohman.com
- Steve Harper says
- Apr 25, 2008 8:23 AM
Recycling is a great idea. Instead of using products that need to be replaced every month use extremely cocentrated products that last for many months. I use a concentrate that when mixed with water will do a large number of home cleaning tasks. Using vinegar and water vs this concentrate I have reduced the local trash contribution by over 400 empty containers in the past 26 years. No empty to discard means zero recycling costs. That concentrate also saves me lots of money.
- Desiree Young says
- Mar 1, 2008 10:51 AM
http://www.kvarnrg.com/ This is a website that shows the benefits of a machine that controls and reduces all those extra currents that eat up our electricity bill. I know two people that have them and they've seen quite a bit of improvement in their homes. Also, LED lights are more expensive than CFL's but they last twice as long and use about 1/3 the energy of them (I think). They're certainly a better investment than CFLs if you can afford them.
- Beryl Ludwig says
- Feb 18, 2008 8:24 PM
Not changing the thermostat and leaving it on 67, keeps our bill low and saves energy. Remember everytime you turn it down and then change it later, uses more energy, due to the unit turning off and on more frequently, and the fact that the cold is absorbed by everything in the whole house; the unit runs harder trying to warm up inanimate objects. I am disabled and therefore home almost all the time. So the heat must stay on a reasonable temp. Do not think you are saving power by turning down the thermostat when leaving the house for short periods.
Resist the temptation to warm up the room "just for a little while", if you get a chill use a blanket or wear a sweater etc.
- María d. says
- Feb 18, 2008 6:39 PM
I have tried to switch all the compact fluorescent from regular incandescent bulbs but, at least in Argentina, incandescent bulbs do not result in water-proof lamps or any appliance which is meant to use outdoors.
- Melissa Dawson Chapman says
- Feb 18, 2008 7:58 AM
CFLs do contain a small amount of mercury, so they cannot be thrown out in the trash (see the related links for disposal information). However, the mercury in CFLs represents a much less significant environmental hazard than incandescent bulbs because CFLs require much less electricity, and more than half of our nation’s electricity is generated by coal-fired power plants—the largest U.S. source of mercury emissions.
In other words, the average coal-fired power plant emits only 3.2 milligrams of mercury for each CFL running six hours per day for five years, but emits nearly 15 milligrams of mercury for an incandescent bulb running the same amount of time, according to UCS research. The difference far exceeds the approximately five milligrams present inside a CFL. Properly disposing of CFLs ensures the mercury in them remains contained.
- Melissa Dawson Chapman says
- Feb 18, 2008 7:57 AM
CFLs do contain a small amount of mercury, so they cannot be thrown out in the trash (see the related links for disposal information). However, the mercury in CFLs represents a much less significant environmental hazard than incandescent bulbs because CFLs require much less electricity, and more than half of our nation’s electricity is generated by coal-fired power plants—the largest U.S. source of mercury emissions.
In other words, the average coal-fired power plant emits only 3.2 milligrams of mercury for each CFL running six hours per day for five years, but emits nearly 15 milligrams of mercury for an incandescent bulb running the same amount of time, according to UCS research. The difference far exceeds the approximately five milligrams present inside a CFL. Properly disposing of CFLs ensures the mercury in them remains contained.
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