How much energy does it take to wash your skivvies?

If you’re not sure, check out the Smart Energy House.  It’s a virtual house on the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel web site. You enter a few easy details about your own house, and it gives you an interactive, clickable way to see how much energy is used by various parts of your home.  There are lots of tips and tricks for saving energy here, too. For example, I clicked on the stove, and it gave me this interesting bit: “Use kitchen ventilation fans wisely. In just one hour, these fans can pull out a house full of warm air.”  That could really keep the furnace running in the wintertime!  Cool site!

Have you tried the new lightbulbs?

Tom and I have replaced almost all our bulbs with CFLs, or compact fluorescent lightbulbs. It took a little coaxing for me to give them a shot because when I hear the word “fluorescent,” I picture that harsh, hideous lighting they have in grocery stores. I’m no techie and not sure how these bulbs differ from regular fluorescents, but they do.  We’ve found the light they shed to be barely distinguishable from an incandescent bulb.

Why change to CFLs?  They’ll save you money on your electric bill and use far less energy than traditional incandescent bulbs.  The scientists say that a 15-watt CFL produces the same amount of light as a traditional 60-watt bulb.  Do the math!  It uses 75% less energy to do the same job.  Although, we’ve found that we like the 20-watt CFLs (equivalent to 75-watt bulbs) because they somehow seem brighter… and they still save 66% of the energy.

Before you go shopping for CFLs, be ready for a little sticker shock – they’re pricier than regular bulbs. But keep in mind that the bulbs last for years longer than traditional bulbs and will pay for themselves many times over in energy savings.

An Inconvenient Truth

Have you seen An Inconvenient Truth?  Please see it.  You may or may not enjoy it, but it’s truly a must-see movie.

If you haven’t heard of An Inconvenient Truth, here’s a one-sentence synopsis: it’s Al Gore’s very thorough explanation of how we are overloading Earth’s atmosphere with gases which prevent it from releasing excess solar radiation (aka The Greenhouse Effect).

You might find this movie boring.  At times, it is.  You may find it politically self-indulgent.  (I did, but just a bit.)  If you’re familiar with the science behind Global Warming, you’ll find the film accurate. If you’re not, you may find the movie to be overly intellectualized.  But nonetheless, I hope you find it to be alarming and a call to action as I did.

One thing this movie lacks, actually, is a to-do list. At the end of the film you’re left with a gnawing fear about Global Warming and nothing more than a web site to address the screeching question in your mind: “What do we DO?”  Luckily the web site is excellent, and it prescribes a list of actions we can all take to contribute to the solution rather than the problem.  In fact, many of the actions are easy, like changing the types of lightbulbs you buy, buying locally grown (and/or organic) produce, planting trees, and lowering thermostats by only 2 degrees. 

I’ll post some other great resources I’ve found about Green Living and caring for our environment, and if you have any to share I would surely love to hear from you!  But in the meantime, please take a moment and add An Inconvenient Truth to your Netflix queue.  You won’t enjoy it, but you’ll be glad you watched.