Thinking Green: 5 Easy Tips
Today is Blog Action Day where thousands of blogs and companies have united to increase awareness about the environment. Now would be a great time to share a few energy saving tips I attempt to employ daily. Using less energy with your daily routines means there will be less demand for power and therefore less coal being burned to provide that power. As a sidenote, for the last two semesters I have been working for Georgia Tech’s Solar Decathlon project, a Department of Energy initiative to promote green thinking and hold a competition among 20 universities to build an energy-efficient solar-powered house. The competition is taking place now at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. so if you’re in the area check out Georgia Tech’s house, I’ve been told my name is somewhere on it.
Georgia Tech’s Solar Decathlon House uses space age aerogel.- Sleeping is good. When your computer is inactive for a short period of time, make sure it goes to sleep. OS X makes this simple with the “Better Energy Savings” preset in System Prefs » Energy Saver. If you’re using an external display for your desktop or laptop, manually turn it off when you leave for an extended period of time, especially if your display uses more than 1 Watt in standby mode. It has been said that “standby power accounts for as much as 10% of household power-consumption”.
- Go CFL. Compact fluorescent light bulbs have come a long way from their buzzing predecessors. They are now inexpensive and use a fraction of the power that incandescent bulbs do. Newer CFLs are offered in a variety of shades so you no longer have to subject yourself to #FFF light if that’s not your thing.
- Take advantage of your surge protector’s always on outlets. Modern surge protectors and power strips have several outlets marked as “always on”. You can take advantage of them by plugging in devices that absolutely need to be plugged in at all times in those outlets, making it easier for you to just switch off the rest when you’re on your way to work.
- Building a PC? Go with a high efficiency PSU. Power supplies like Antec’s earthwatts line of PSUs have greater than 80% efficiency on all loads. Compare that to the 60-70% efficiency of traditional power supplies.
- Go solar for your gadgets. Ditch the wall warts and charge your gadgets with a Solio universal charger. Just set it on a window sill and you’re good to go.
What do you do to lower your energy bill and think green? Other tips include switching to headphones instead of using your 1,000 Watt 10.2 speaker system and unplugging USB/FW computer peripherals when not in use.
Here in Brazil most showers are heated my electric energy, so if you want to same some energy, take short showers. In usa and in eurore, people have electric stoves, which isn’t a very smart thing, I’ll give an example. You make energy from burning coal, with a efficiency of, let’s say 75%. then you loose more energy while transferring this energy till your house. After all this process, you use energy to heat a stove, transforming electricity into heat. So try to change to a gas stove or watch out how long you have to keep things cooking. This is one more TIP in how to save some energy. :)
Nice one Paul… you should have called this “5 Geeky Tips to Go Green”. I have the solio charger, and I see that they now have newer versions. I should check if it’ll charge my iPhone. ;)
How about you turn off the lights from time to time? I should start counting how many times I switch off the lights when I walk upstairs. Having CFLs in the house isn’t an excuse.
How about powering off your devices and not letting them stay in “Standby Mode”
People do not realize how simple being more environment-friendly is. Your suggestions, along with Chris’s simple “turn the lights off” are perfect examples. Hopefully more people can be just be slightly less lazy to greatly benefit our planet. Good article.
Agreed! Turn off the lights! Gotta harp on the kids about this every day. Another favorite: de-power the gizmos. Who cares if the DVD player flashes 12:00 constantly? A funny aside, I think it’s odd that the way you know my Philips DVD player is off, is that the light is ON. Who came up with that idea, the electric company?
Another power-saving idea that isn’t mentioned often. In the shower, don’t adjust the hot water with the cold. If that doesn’t make sense, think of the logic. If the water is too hot, turn down the hot, don’t turn up the cold. It amazes me how this escapes people. (Also, if you’re a homeowner, invest the extra bucks for a tankless water heater. Costs about twice as much, but provides all the hot water you could ever want, without heating it all day and all night waiting for you to take a shower)
Or if you just wanted to help you could invest in a push bike and leave the petrol sucking Mustang at home ;)
I use one of these backpacks, works pretty well, and not incredibly geeky looking.
Good stuff Paul. I got one in late last night for the Blog Action Day.
It amazing the things we take for granted nowadays. I’ve out fitted the house with CFL’s. Can’t use them on a dimmer but..
I’ve started the power strip on/off thing. The “media center” holds a GameCube, XBOX, XBOX360, Tivo, DVD recorder and stereo gear. Then I have the PC area with desktops and laptops. Even the simple leaving your phone charger plugged in.
Once you start it becomes habitual. ;)
I am a darn fool. I live in DC and have not been down to the decathlon. Egad. I really need to make it… today! Today’s the awards. Since this is all about Solar, I wanted to ask you folks to sign a petition to encourage Congress to pass meaningful energy legislation.
The bill they are about to pass includes the best fuel economy standards ever (35 mpg by 2020) and a renewable electricity standard (15% by 2020) that guarantees the growth of renewable, clean energy. But there is a chance these two key advances won’t make it through to the final bill.
I am working with a coalition to make sure Congress sends the president a strong energy bill with meaningful changes for our environment and planet.
Go to http://www.energybill2007.org and sign the petition. This is our chance for real progress, don’t let Congress back down!
Reduce, reuse, recycle. In that order.
Reduce: When you go to the coffee shop, bring your own metal cup for them to fill, and stir your coffee with a metal spoon if you take it with cream/sugar.
Reuse: If you purchase a bottled water (which you shouldn’t), at least refill it a few times before buying another. If you use your metal coffee cup for water, you won’t have to do this.
Recycle: Recycle the bottle when you are finished with it so that it can be repurposed into something else.
Go paperless. For real. Never print. Never burn CDs or DVDs. Don’t use disposable things. The materials that disposable things are made of are only a portion the resources you are consuming. All products have to be manufactured, warehoused and shipped which requires electricity, fuel, and packaging.
Paul, nice post. I did one on building a compost bin for under $10. I think there are all kinds of great ways to cut down on our footprint and you’ve added some great tips here. Hadn’t thought about the surge protector point, I will do that. Also, I have a solio and use it to charge my motorola slvr 7 and ipod (when it’s not plugged into the mac) I love it.
That’s really great, Paul.
We need more awareness of simple ways that people can, themselves, make a small difference.
The tips above are all achievable for the individual and that is what is important because only a few have it in them to really change the world, the rest must change THEIR world, and that mass change, will make the difference.