As many of you know, for the last few months Mike and I have been working on going green. We really want to reduce our impact on the environment and have been slowly making changes in our everyday life. So, I thought I'd share with you some of the trials and sucessess of becoming eco-friendly. Every now and again I'll post an everyday eco-problem and our solution. I will also post how much money could be saved by implementing this solution. If anyone has any other ideas of how to solve the problem please post them in the comments section. I would love to hear everyone's suggestions.
Eco-Problem 1: Lighting
* Only 10% of the electricity a conventional lightbulb uses is converted into light. The other 90% is given off as heat (an even bigger problem in Florida where most of our electricity bill is due to air-conditioning).
Our Eco-Solution: CFLs
*As our conventional lightbulbs die, we are replacing them with Compact Florescent Lightbulbs. Eventually they all will be CFLs. CFLs are 75% more efficient than conventional lightbulbs and give off very little heat (they operate at 90 degrees F versus the 350 degrees F of conventional bulbs). They also last up to 10 times longer, which means less resources are used to make them.
They do contain mercury which means they need to be safely recycled. Waste Management now has these nifty CFL recycling kits that hold 15 bulbs. You just fill up the box, seal it and pop it in the mail. Waste Management safely recycles your used CFLs into materials for new CFLs.
Money Saved: For every lightbulb replaced, you save about $3 per year or $45 over the life of the lightbulb. If you were to replace 20 lightbulbs with CFLs you could save about $68 per year or $906 over the life of the lightbulbs. (For more savings info see homedepot.com's eco options section)
4 comments:
Another idea: use less lights! turn them off when not in use. how about motion detector sensors that turn them on only when someone is os in the room and moving around?
Vote.
In all seriousness, while recycling and conservation of personal energy usage and so forth are all good things, the amount of damage that individuals do to the environment in a lifetime is trivial compared to what the law lets corporations get away with, or what gets wasted every day due to lack of decent mass transit. If you could get the government to spend 10% of what they spend on highways building mass transit instead, that would do more good for the environment than a million people recycling.
We already turn off all lights except for the ones in the room we are using. On cool days, I turn off all the lights and just open the blinds. Motion sensors would be good except for the fact the dogs would end up turning on every light in the house.
Yay voting! The environment is my #1 issue (followed closely by the economy and education). But, since the government is extremely slow on environmental issues, I think I'll keep doing my part at home.
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