Savings on one light fixture

This is the light with the standard 40W bulbs which burn so hot they melted the white tubes. That’s 200W every time that light switch is flipped.

This is the light with the new 9W CFL bulbs. That’s a little less than 1/5th the energy being used.

Changes I have noticed in bottled water

We buy a few cases of bottled water a week. I have noticed recently that some of the companies have switched to a thinner bottle. The vinyl is so thin that it feels more like a plastic bag than a bottle. This has a two-fold benefit. They get more new bottles out of the same kilogram of raw materials and there is less material that has to be recycled or is going into the dump. I use a refillable Lexan bottle most of the time but getting my dad to do more than throw cardboard in the recycle bin is er, difficult. He wasn’t born in the recycling generation. It seems like they were starting to talk about it in the 60s but that wasn’t long after we had doctors walking into delivery rooms smoking. We’ve come a long way and we probably shouldn’t look back for too long because we’ve got so much farther to go.

Green Bags: Help for the budget and the environment

I tend to only buy vegetables to cook the same day or with in 3-4 days. I don’t just buy them without a specific time to prepare them in mind. This is a habit I have fallen into for the last few years. Back in the 1990s I was constantly spending money on fruits and vegetables and then getting distracted and not having time to do anything with them and finally tossing them out. I know the smell of vegetables that are starting to get a bit old I didn’t know that was due to a specific gas. I also wasn’t aware that there was a way to combat the effects of ethylene on our food. By using a Green Bag we can extend the shelf-life of fruits and vegetables hopefully long enough to get around to preparing and eating them. It’s worth buying Green Bags just to preserve the life of bananas alone. I’m not a big fan of green bananas but they’re also not very tasty on the other end when they’re bursting out of their skins. Throwing away food doesn’t help anyone. I wish they made the refrigerators so they would wick away the ethylene instead of just making things cold. The bags help retard the development of molds and fungi on food. You’ll be able to keep foods separate and not have flavors and odors commingling in the “crisper” drawer. Go to greenbags.com and watch the video explaining how they work. You can use them to keep freshly cut flowers in case you don’t have time to put them up immediately. Heck, in ancient times they could have used them to preserve the offerings. There are tales of priests getting a bit loopy from constant exposure to ethylene gas. Now when you see a sale on something that tends to be pricy you can buy it, put it away and then prepare it later when you have time and it’s back at full price in the store. They’ll pay for themselves within a couple of grocery store trips since you won’t need to replace things as often.

Cloned food. Thank you, Food and Drug Admin.

It appears that the FDA, who approved the use of HFCS as a sweetener, has approved cloned foods for human consumption. I’m sorry but my skepticism is not letting me feel the love here. What are we going to do when the replicated food supply starts to, well, kinda have a whang to it because of replicate fading? Are the cloned animals sterile? What guarantee do we have that a clone won’t be introduced to the normal breeding population? I think we need a lot more information than just being informed that the FDA has given its stamp of approval to the thing.

Wood Preserving

I’ve driven in every part of the south of this country and I have seen wood poles in the ground with lines strung across every state. On trips as a kid I tried counting poles and watching the lines go from pole to pole. Hey I was an only child and there has to be some amusement in life. That was in the 1970s and back then I didn’t really think about how the wood was treated and preserved. Most telephone poles back then looked like they had been coated with tar. I’m glad to know that wood products are now treated with substances that have a minimal impact on our ecology. The Pacific Wood Preserving Companies are that kind of producer. With five companies around the western United States they are able to give their customers high quality wood products preserved with EPA registered materials. When you go to their site you’ll see a link at the top with the Material Safety Data Sheets as well as product information sheets. You’ll learn about their history, the products they make, the chemical preservatives that go into them and how they can benefit you in landscaping as well as utilities and agriculture. You may be considering buying used railroad ties to use in landscaping. Before you do that you should have a look at pacificwood dot com click the literature link for information about Landscape Ties. They have links to some of the latest news stories about the wood preservation industry as well as a FAQ page divided by preservative. If you’re only thinking, check them out first. If you have already started looking check them out now.

Busrail

Our bus company, Capital Metro is going to be running a daily rail service sometime this year, I think. they’ve already purchased the cars and have them at a station. The other stations are still under construction. I didn’t vote for this because given my hours I can never make use of it unless they go to a 24hr schedule. It would be nice to drive to the park and ride and board the train and get dropped off within walking distance of work but since the service stops at 11pm or something like that, it isn’t an option. I mean I’d love to pay them a few dollars a week and have them save me hundreds a year in fuel costs. Hopefully the money will start rolling in and they’ll see the wisdom of posting some security and running the trains all night. Machines that sit idle are costing you money. The airlines understand that. Hopefully CapMetro will get it too.

Outdoor Accents with LEDs

When I walk down the lighting aisles in the home improvement warehouse stores, I see a lot of things I’d like to be able to work with where I live. Then I start to think about how much I am going to have to pay the city utility company for the priviledge. It’s the same reason I don’t do holiday lighting. I can see where landscape lighting would improve the look of my property but given the cost of powering incandescent lighting I have chosen not to make that upgrade. That should be much less of a concern for people. With LED landscape lighting the energy costs drop to roughly ten percent, plus the LED bulbs have a longer life than incandescent ones. These energy conserving features allow the lighting system to pay for itself in a matter of months. They don’t burn with anywhere near the heat and you can afford to place more lighting and still save on your electricity bill. Check out LizardLighting dot come and read some of the discussions in the forum between current and new users. LED landscape lighting can help bring your home closer to the ideal image you have for it.

An eye opener

Well I took the GreenIQ.com Quiz and I did worse than I expected but learned quite a bit. While many of the things I have been doing have been ecologically conscious, there’s a lot I didn’t know about and haven’t been doing. And there are a few things I have known about but have been choosing to not do, like shutting down my PC when I am away. My plan is to go through this the GreenIQ website and use it as a reference for taking a personal inventory of my lifestyle as far as the environment is concerned. Many of the energy saving ideas could save me money while in addition to benefiting our world. GreenIQ.com doesn’t stop at the IQ test. You can sit for hours and read through the resources for ways to make small changes to the way you live that have a larger impact than you may realize.Most people, myself included spend a lot of time on autopilot as far as water consumbase our time spent in the shower on how urgent we need to get dressed and out the door. We keep the water running while brushing our teeth and shaving. Instead of mindless activity, we could retrain ourselves to shut the water off more often and take a shorter shower. There is a whole wealth of other behavior changes, purchase changes that could reduce consumption just by being more productive with the things we are already doing. Take the quiz. It will amaze you.