Energy Efficiency and Going Green is Simple and Easy
If someone were to ask you what your “carbon footprint” is, would you be able to answer them? Neither would I. To date I don’t know how much carbon waste I’m pumping out every year via my car, my air conditioning, my heating, electricity, food, and bio-waste, I just have no clue. However just because you don’t know what your “carbon footprint” is or how many pounds of carbon waste you create every year doesn’t mean you can’t take steps to lower it. Right now I’m going to let you know every easy thing you can do to be energy efficient and save money. From your car to your toilet and everything in between, by the end of this article you will hopefully be motivated enough to share this information with others.
Now, since I mentioned car first, I might as well start with it. Using your car just might be the worst of all your carbon waste habits! Now I understand that people need to use their cars to go to work and whatnot, but seriously, the less you use it, the better. Carpooling and public transportation are great options to save you money and decrease your carbon footprint. If you are using an SUV or Truck to drive to a job that does not entail construction, or transportation of heavy/large/largequantities of objects, you need to be smacked across the face. You are needlessly WASTING gasoline and creating a LOT of carbon waste! And to those of you who say, “but I live in New England! (or whatever place that gets crazy weather in the winter)”, I say this to you, get a subaru. Subaru makes all wheel drive cars that perform fantastic in the winter and are better on gas than SUVs and Trucks, you seriously have no reason to be driving a gas guzzler needlessly. Now I know I may sound like a broken record here, but if you can afford the time to ride a bike to work (or anywhere), then do it. You know how much waste you create by riding a bike? ZERO! Ride a bike ESPECIALLY if you keep on telling yourself you want to get in shape; wake up earlier, get ready, and ride your bike to work. You create zero pullution and you get your daily exercise in the process riding there and back. If you refuse to ride a bike, get a motorcycle or scooter to ride to work/whereever. If you absolutely must use your car, ensure that your tires are at about 35psi, your air filter is clean, your oil is change is up to date, and your car is clean. A washed and waxed car gets 7% better mileage than if it is dirty. Turning your air condition on in your vehicle also uses more gas, however if you are on the highway, air conditioning has little effect on mileage. Having said all I can remember about car efficiency, we can move on to the home.
In your home there are many, many, many ways to increase energy efficiency and save yourself money. The easiest thing to do, as you may have heard before, simply turn lights off when you leave a room. The second step is to leave your shades and blinds open to let as much light into your house as possible (during the day) so you don’t need to turn lights on. Now the third step to that, is to go out to wal-mart, target, home depot, or wherever, and change your regular candescent bulbs to energy efficient bulbs. Yes the energy efficient fluorescent bulbs cost about 6-8 USD for a 4 pack, but trust me, they will pay for themselves within the first month. You save roughly 4-6 times more energy using those bulbs than the regular candescent bulbs.
Turn your air conditioning off when you are not home, you will notice huge savings on your bill. Please don’t be a little ninny and tell yourself, “but its so hot I want my house to be cool when I come home.” Be aware that there are people in this world who have to deal with the heat and the cold as it is, be thankful you are able turn on your AC when you come home. Easy fix, come home, turn your AC on, and stand in front of it for a couple minutes. Same thing goes with heating, If you are not home, turn it off, or when you go to bed, turn it off. In all honesty If you turn your heat off when you go to sleep, you won’t feel cold under your covers. However when you wake up in the morning, a good idea is to wake up fifteen minutes to a half hour earlier, turn your heat on, and just rest in bed while your room gets warm. But remember to turn it off before leaving for long periods of time! There are also energy efficient space heaters which you can buy at wal-mart, home depot, etc. They are a great alternative to using your built in heating (they heat your room better as well, no joke) and they normally come with a remote so you don’t need to get out of bed!
For this part I will throw appliances/electronics into one section of the article here. Using a laptop is better than using a desktop plain and simple. Let it be known that charging a battery of something electronic while the electronic is on is a BAD IDEA. It kills the battery life very quickly when you do that, the best thing to do is run the battery until its dead or almost dead, then turn your electronic off to charge it back up. If you are using a laptop and can’t afford to stop using it when the battery dies, save what you are doing, turn it off, take the battery out, plug your power supply into the laptop, and use it that way without damaging the battery. Leaving charging units plugged in while they are not being used is also a bad idea as they continually use power whether they are charging something or not (people tend to do this with cell phone chargers constantly). External hard-drives, printers, TVs, DvD players, monitors, desktops, game consoles, home theatre equipment and whatever else you can think of should be turned off when not in use. Now some of you may be thinking, “screw that, why would I go and turn ALL that stuff off?”, well here is your solution. Group them up and plug them into outlets with a switch (feel free to use a surge protector/power tap) so you can just flick the switch and everything will turn off (or whatever you specified to that switch). This again will save you a lot of money, as many electronic devices, when plugged in, still use small amounts of power while turned off. For those of you who enjoy falling asleep with the TV on like myself, use the sleep timer on your remote, set it for 30 minutes to an hour, and zonk out. Front-loading washers are by design more energy efficient and also use less water, and you can also buy an energy efficient dishwasher as well (Although these aren’t exactly simple changes as they can cost a pretty penny). Letting your clothes air-dry will also save you good amounts of money every month, however, if you only do laundry 2-3 times a month, its not a huge deal.
Being healthy is also good for the environment believe it or not! Consuming less (or proper amount) while gaining more energy is a great thing about being healthy! Doing things such as walking or riding a bike to the store, work, or friend’s house produce zero carbon waste while giving you exercise at the same time! Doing your own chores also gives you some exercise, and of course, taking stairs instead of an elevator or escalator (like you didn’t hear that before).
Recycling bottles, cans, and paper is also effective, as well as buying products from your local farmer’s market. Using safe cleaning products also helps, many companies are coming out with safer cleaning products which is making them much easier to find in stores. Try to stay away from products in aerosol cans (I know they aren’t completely unnavoidable).
Now this last one may seem odd to some of you, but regardless of how you feel it is extremely effective. It all goes back to the old rule, “If its yellow let it mellow, if its brown flush it down”. Not flushing after you urinate saves lots, and lots, of water. Not to mention your water bill will be significantly lower. Many of you think its gross, and all I have to say to that is, stop being such a whiny baby, its urine, 92% of it is water anyway, no joke. So in essence if you flush every time you urinate, you are using 3+ gallons of water to flush a small amount of waste, now THAT is the REAL waste! On average depending on how often you use the bathroom, you should flush your urine after your 3rd or 4th time, because unfortunately leaving it for too long can cause unnatractive odors.
I hope that this article has informed you on some of the simple and easy things one can do to increase energy efficiency and save a good amount of money in the process. One thing we can all count on though, if the world continues the path that it is on and lazy people refuse to take action, we’re all in for sky-high prices for everything, and health issues for everyone. So lets not get a carbon foot up our butts, and take care of the world as well as ourselves!
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