Did you know your Christmas lights put off harmful CO2 emissions? Each strand of 100 incandescent light bulbs that you put up on your house or Christmas tree can put off as much as 250 pounds of CO2 emissions during December.
If you're like me and really like to light up the house, that can really add up. But there is something we can do about it! Use LED Christmas lights!
Not only do they reduce your CO2 emissions, they use 90% less energy to run, they almost never burn out (no more searching for that stinking bulb that isn't working!), and they are much safer from a fire hazard standpoint.
They're a bit more expensive, but nothing crazy, and the energy you save will definitely make up for it. You can find the lights easily looking for online stores. One good one is christmastreasures.com.
Over the years we've collected a lot of tips and tricks to helping the environment. Here is a list of eight great ways you can make an impact. Some are pretty obvious, but a few are things people don't regularly think about, so check it out! Also, look for our "Tips and Tricks" page coming soon!
8. I'll start with the really obvious one: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle! - While everyone knows about this phrase, many people don't understand that the order is very important! Reducing is by far the most important of the three, followed by reusing, and finally recycling. Cutting down purchasing of recyclable products should be the first step. One great tip is to buy a water filter and use tap water instead of bottled water. One of the biggest wastes in the world every year is bottled water. Grab a thermos or your favorite cup and don't buy any more plastic bottles! Of course whatever you do buy should be reused if possible and then finally recycled. Recycling aluminum for use a second time requires just 5% of the energy it takes to manufacture it the first time.
7. Put Your Refrigerator in it's place!- Move your fridge away from your range, stove, or oven or any direct sunlight. Check the seals on all four sides of the door (close a dollar bill in the seal and pull, if it comes out without much resistance, look into replacing your seal!). Don't keep it too cold: ten degrees colder than needed can increase energy use by 25%. And get rid of the second fridge in the garage! You can live without it, and it's a huge energy hog.
6. Unplug! - Items like TV's and everything else in your entertainment center, your printer, and other electrical toys, etc, use up a ton of electricity while not in use, just by being plugged in. Put all your items that are near each other into a power strip/surge protector and when you're heading to bed for the night, flip the switch!
5. This one is really cool: End The Junk Mail! When we did this it was one of the best things ever. There are services that will remove you from catalog, credit card lists and many other junk mail sources. Over 100 million trees are destroyed every year for the production of junk mail, and the greenhouse gas emissions from this are equivalent to that of 9 million cars on the road.
4.Use Cloth Bags For Grocery Shopping - It is estimated that Americans use 100 billion plastic bags annually which consumes 12 million barrels of oil per year to produce. Many grocery stores offer cloth bags to be purchased for about $1 and can be used over and over. Just bring them back with you! If your grocery store isn't one of them, they're not hard to find elsewhere. It's absolutely worth it.
3. Switch to Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs - CFL's as they're called, are a huge growing trend, and for great reasons. They require about 75% less energy to run, and last up to ten times longer. They also reduce carbon dioxide emission by about 500 lbs per year. 15-20 of them are equivalent to taking a car off the road.
2. Reduce A/C and Heating Use - Now I'm not saying you should freeze or sweat yourself to death, but this is the number one energy hog in a household. Nearly half of our energy use comes from these two things. Check window and door seals for tightness, and be sure your attic insulation is adequate. Try setting thermostats a few degrees higher in the summer and lower in the winter, particularly when out of the house. You can get thermostats that run on timers as well. And don't forget that the Sun is your friend! Keep blinds and window shades open in the winter to let sunlight in, and closed in the summer. Some blinds block the suns rays better than others as well, so check what you have.
1. Convert To Renewable Energy! - Everything in the list previously are awesome steps you can take to do your part in helping the environment. Taking those steps in your household can cut your energy use by up to 40%. But there is one thing you can do as a homeowner that can have a massive impact on the environment: Eliminate our reliance on fossil fuels.
Everyone who can switch from the electric companies power to their own is making a huge difference. There are many professional contracting companies out there that will install solar panel systems for you, but they are quite expensive when done that way. We will have a resource on this site soon that will help people choose the right one and also find appropriate tax breaks the government will give when you do this. But it is a huge undertaking usually costing around $10,000 or more. You can generally have your system pay for itself with electrical savings within 10-20 years, and it's all profit after that.
Another option many people are going with (including us since we're poor kids right out of college!) is building our own panels in our free time. Obviously we can't build 20 panels and throw them on the roof all at once, but there is an awesome guide that shows you step by step how to take a trip to the hardware store and build a solar panel or wind turbine, mount it to your house or back yard, and hook it into the electrical grid.
Rather than pay a fortune all at once for professional installation, we're building panels for a fraction of the cost and they pay for themselves in energy savings in weeks instead of years.
If everyone followed this guide, our reliance on fossil fuel based energy would be chipped away in huge chunks and it would be pretty exciting. We encourage everyone to give it a shot. It's absolutely worth the small investment.
Click Here To See Our Review of the Top Do It Yourself Solar Guides Available
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