Exactly what the title says. What are the best steps to take in everyday life? I don’t drive, and I’ve been making serious efforts (more serious than usual!) to turn off lights/save water. I’ve been taking trains, buses, and ferries instead of flying. But there’s got to be more to do, isn’t there? Just turning off lights and flipping my electrical plugs off doesn’t feel like very much.
You could cut your breathing by 50% to reduce CO2 emissions.
Dammit.
I know, I know… but if all 6.5 billion of us comply, think of the savings!
Well the saying think globally, act locally would apply. Try to reduce your energy footprint. Some easy ways is to replace your lightbulbs with compact florecent, lowering your thermostat, and sealing up your house. Replacing appliances with more efficient ones, including converting from electric to gas for things like drying, cooking, hot water.
If it’s at all relevant in your area (probably not if your location field is accurate…), see if you can switch to Solar Heating for hot water. This works extremely well (as in need to turn on the electric backup maybe 50 days a year, often even less) in sunny and hot areas, but not sure about the American NW.
How much do you fly that taking a train would really matter? (I assume flying is more comfortable) – maybe that isn’t so much of an issue. I’m not even sure how much busses are better than airplanes, for instance, in terms of emmissions (trains I can see how they’d be a lot better, I agree with you there)
Steps you could reasonably take (in addition to what kanicbird has suggested, and you’ve already mentioned) could include: re-using your towels another day or two (less laundry); avoiding clothes that require dry-cleaning as much as possible; and in general trying to cut down on your purchases of processed food and goods (the processing is usually environmentally unfriendly).
Oh, and don’t wear black when you go out on a sunny day – you’ll soak up those rays, heating yourself and the environment in the process, instead of reflecting them 
last part isn’t serious, of course!
Enough with the beans, already.
Just some more things that came to mind:
-Install a low flow showerhead (most are about 3g/m, you can go down to 1g/m and they work well now)
-Wash chothes in cold water
- Consider a clothes line instead of a dryer
- Consider fabrics, cotton takes a lot of energy to dry, polyester (and poly-flease) take very little. Now I don’t know about the energy input of these 2 fabrics, so factor that in as well.
- Put a brick in your toilet tank and see if it still flushes OK
- Lower your water heater temp setting to the lowest setting that provides the comfort that you want, need or desire - try to get it so you need very little, if any, cold water in your shower.
- Choose foods that have low energy footprints.
- When you cook, try to mnimize the cooking fuel, cut things into small pieces so they cook faster, try to use a lid, consider getting a pressure cooker, which will cook even faster - but OTHO if you are heating your home with fuel, remember that your furnace is not as efficient as your gas stove or oven (since the stove and oven not externally vented - unless you turn on the vent)
- Some people reclaim the heat from their dryer by venting the dryer indoors, which is more suitable for electric dryers, but I’ve also seen it with gas (again making it a unvented combustion appliance). Humidity is one issue, which may cause mold problems, and if you vent in the same room of the dryer, you will lengthen drying times, the other is lint will be blown in the house as well.
- Try to reclaim wate heat from waste water. There are heat exchangers that can take warm shower wastewater to preheat the cold water, a cheaper way to do this is to capture the water in the tub basin and drain it when the water has cooled of.
- Heat only the rooms you need to (the ones you are in at the time you are in there). You can get gas and kero heaters (both vented and unvented types) that are made to heat sections of your house, unvented ones are most efficient but have indoor air quality issues. Even use of a electric space heater in one room may be better then hating the entire house with a oil/gas furnace.
- Look into wood stoves, if you have the ability to cut,spilt it yourself, I think the cost is something like $10/cord, since tree fuel is CO2 neutral, the only CO2 would be for the chainsaw and spiltter. Even if you don’t cut it yourself, you would just be adding transportation CO2 to it.
- If you need more heat in a place you are resting (bed, couch), get a electric blanket instead of heating the entire room or house.
Probably the most effective thing you could do is to convince your friends and relatives to also be more energy efficient.
Wait, burning fossil fuels is automatically better? Surely that depends on how the electricity is generated? I mean, if it’s nuclear or hydro, this doesn’t still hold.
With the exception of this (the brick could dissolve and damage plumbing - use a plastic container filled with water and some rocks or something), it seems like sound advice.
I’ll second the CFLs (they save you a bunch of $$$, and are apparently sometimes subsidised by local energy concerns in places in the 'states, so while they’re already affordable, they might be as cheap or cheaper than incandecents where you are.) and add a recommendation to get a programmable thermostat; they’re cheap and easy to install. It can turn the heat down during the day while you’re away, overnight while you’re asleep, and turn it up in the morning just before you’re supposed to wake up.
Make an effort to educate your community. e.g. - Could you explain what flipping plugs off means?
Since this thread seeks views of actions a person could take, rather than the typical dispute over how much humans are contributing or whether the phenomenon exists, I’m going to nudge it over to IMHO.
If any cantankerous folks want to dispute the premise of the thread, start a new thread back in GD and just post a link in this thread.
[ /Moderating ]
The water conservation tips are good ones, thanks! I hadn’t really thought about that aspect.
I’m unfortunately in university dorms for a term, so a lot of the suggestions like turning heat off, serious home overhauls etc. aren’t plausible for the moment. But when I get back to my apartment in the States, you bet!
I don’t think American outlets (not plugs; I was looking for the word and couldn’t find it) do this, or at least, I haven’t seen any. There’s an on/off switch for UK outlets. I presume it saves energy, or does something beneficial, to turn it off when I’m not using it; otherwise it’s silly to have them, isn’t it?
Well, you could educate yourself on the science of the question. The science is far from settled, the climate models can’t forecast the next decade’s climate, much less next century’s climate, the earth has not warmed appreciably in the last eight years, the role of the sun (via cosmic rays) is generally ignored, the scientific “consensus” doesn’t exist … the list goes on and on.
What you can do, if you are concerned about the world, is put your energy and your effort to solving some of the very real problems we face now (air pollution, illness, malnutrition, corruption, polluted drinking water) rather than worrying about what might happen in a hundred years.
People are always saying “global warming will hit the poor hardest”, which may or may not be true. Bjorn Lomberg got the UN Ambassadors and representatives from many of the world’s poorest countries together, representing half the world’s poor people, and asked them to rank the problems that they felt were most important. Global warming didn’t even make it into the top 25.
So what you could do is listen to what the poor people have to say …
w.
In most places in the US the electricity is just thrown in a big pot (the grid). There is no way to find out just where your power has come from. Most of the power still comes from burning stuff (and due to laws of thermodynamics at about 50% efficiency under ideal conditions), so I would say that burning fossil fuels are automatically better then electric resistance heat if you need heat on site. The exception would be if you chose to pay more $/kwh for renuable electricity, which would create a incentive for more ‘green’ power on the grid.
But thinking about cooking when the waste heat is not needed, I’m not totally sure, as gas ovens are vented into the house, basically they act as a mini-chimney so the gas gets good air flow, while a electric oven is more sealed against airflow so the heat stays where it is.
kanicbird: Nice list, many ideas I never thought about.
If you already have a low flush toilet, the brick idea will not make a positive difference and may require more double flushes. Just something to think about.
There might be a few flaws in the wood burning idea.
The single quickest energy savings anyone can make is to change out Incandescence bulbs with Compact Fluorescents bulbs. The use anywhere from ¼ to 1/6[sup]th[/sup] the energy.
If you have an older appliance, start shopping for its replacement and look for the most efficient replacement.
When you buy your next car, look carefully for fuel efficiency and low emissions. There are several Hondas and Toyotas that are extremely low emission. Consider a hybrid. Every early adopted of this technology and similar high efficiency technologies is helping to encourage further development.
On the same idea, look into Geo-thermal heating, a windmill generator or solar panels. You will be encouraging further advances in these technologies.
Replace old leaky windows, with new double pane, high R factor windows.
Consider another layer of insulation in your attic.
If your electric company gives you a choice, purchase your energy from non-coal and non-garbage incinerator sources. Nuclear, Solar, Wind, Hydro or Gas are far cleaner than Coal.
Turn lights off when not in use.
If you are going out to buy a High Def TV. Buy an LCD, they use half the energy of a plasma or DLP. If you need a new monitor, buy LCD.
Install a programmable Thermostat so you can set up your heating to heat at the appropriate times and be cooler during the workdays. The will pay for themselves for most people in one winter.
etc.
Jim
Bold mine, nitpick low emissons don’t really help CO2 levels, they just help lower smog levels and eventually go to CO2 anyway.
Good point, high fuel efficiency is the best bet for strictly CO[sub]2[/sub]. Low emissions is still a worthwhile green friendly purchase for issues of air quality.
Jim
It’s a socket or an outlet, at least on this side of the pond.
On/off switches are commonly installed only in rooms such as living rooms where you might want to turn on one or more table or floor lights at once across the room – the switch is near the door, the lights might be farther away. Most outlets do not have individual switches.
Ordinary lamps and most appliances do not draw any electricity when turned off, whether at a wall switch or on the unit itself. The exceptions are some TVs and electronic devices where a trickle of juice is necessary for some reason, such as being able to detect when a remote control requests the set to turn on, or a LED light on an answering machine or clock, which is a very little draw. Also, some older VCRs have no flash memory or battery backup, so unplugging them for more than a few seconds may wipe out any memory settings like favorite channels or timer controls.
It’s probably not worth unplugging most unused devices unless you will be leaving the house for a long time, like a few days or weeks. And then one good reason is to reduce the risk of fire – not a big risk, to be sure, but the fewer cables that are carrying electricity, the less the danger.
And if you are leaving for a long time, don’t forget to turn off the water to your laundry hoses – they are a weak spot in the plumbing, and are more likely to break than any other water-carrying pipe. Believe me, I know from personal experience.