Reduce Your CO2 Footprint
Posted on July 7, 2007
Filed Under Environment |
As we are all staying home, not driving and sticking to our TV or desktops watching Live Earth concerts, we can also begin practicing habits that will help save out Mother Earth.
Consider carbon offset which is defined as the act of reducing (”offsetting”) greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere. A well-known example is the planting of trees to compensate for the greenhouse gas emissions from personal air travel. Here are more suggestions…
Electricity
- Turn it off!
- Turning off lights, TVs, computers and stereos when not in use will reduce your CO2 footprint and save you money. Think about it this way: if you were going shopping for an hour would you leave your car running? Of course not!! So why leave the lights or TV on when you leave a room or go out of the house?
- Unplug
- Many appliances like TVs, DVD players, stereos and cell phone chargers use electricity even when not in use. This is called Phantom draw and it can account for up to 5% of your electric bill. You can stop it by directly unplugging electronics or by plugging items into a surge protector/power strip and turning the whole strip off when you leave a room.
- Get rid of the old fridge
- If you have a fridge more than 10 yrs old it’s probably a vampire on your wallet, sucking your money away and putting thousands of pounds of CO2 into the air each year. If you have a 20 year old fridge it might use 2000 kWh annually costing you as much as $250 per year!!
- A clean fridge is…
- An efficient fridge. The coils on the back of a fridge are used to transfer heat from inside to outside, keeping your food inside cold. When the coils get dirty the fridge has to work harder to keep your food cool. To keep you fridge from breaking a sweat clean the coils every 6 months. All this takes is wiping them down with a rag. As an added benefit from cleaning, your fridge will probably make less noise because it doesn’t work as hard when it’s clean.
- Hang it up
- About 5% of all electricity used in US homes is used to dry clothes. Air dry your clothes and save 5% on your electric bill.
Hot Water
- Use cold-cold cycle for laundry
- There are detergents on the market that don’t need warm or hot water to get your clothes clean. This will save you money and will keep CO2 out of the air.
- Shorter showers
- This may be difficult but taking shorter, colder or fewer showers can save you money on your energy bill. Water heating accounts for many lbs of CO2 per household annually, think of all the CO2 your can keep out of the air.
Heating/ Cooling
- Turn it up
- Each degree you turn up your AC can save you a few percent on your energy bill, keeping CO2 out of the air and dollars in your wallet.
- Turn it down
- In the winter turning down you heat a few degrees can save you a few percent on you energy bill. Remember you can always add another layer if you feel a chill.
Driving and Transport (and not)
- Don’t idle your car
- An idling car gets exactly 0 miles per gallon. If you are going to be stopped for more than 30 seconds turn it off. If you are getting out of the car at all, turn it off!
- Accelerate gently
- Hard acceleration just takes you to the gas station faster. Accelerate gently and save cash and CO2.
- Drive slower on the highway
- Think about how much more energy it takes to run than walk. Now think about how much more energy (gas) your car uses going 70mph than it does at 55mph.
- Drive less
- Driving less is an obvious one, but there are a number of ways you can achieve this goal: Take public transit, get some exercise and ride a bike or walk, consolidate trips, get the groceries and do other errands in the same trip. If you reduce your mileage by 20 miles a week you can keep up to 1000 lbs of CO2 out of the air annually.
- Ride Your Bike
- Drive less and ride your bike. Check out groups like the Bicycle Friendly Community Campaign for more information.
- Share your ride!
- This one has been around for a while but it’s still a very effective way to save money and keep CO2 out of the air.
- Fly less
- Flying is one of the most carbon intensive modes of transport. The average cross-country round trip flight emits about 6000 lbs of global warming pollution. Short flights are the worst, emitting more CO2 per mile traveled than medium to longer flights. So when possible take a train or bus instead of flying. Just think of all the security and TSA headaches you’ll avoid!
Waste
- Buy things with little packaging
- Packaging is just a waste. What you really want is the thing inside. More packaging results in more weight, requiring more energy to get it to you. And then there is the waste. Landfills can release large amounts of methane, powerful greenhouse gas, so reducing trash also helps to fight global warming.
- Buy locally
- Shipping food long distances uses lots of fuel. Why buy apples from some exotic location when you have local apples in season? Buying local supports local farmers and reduces the CO2 emissions from food transport.
- Recycle (and compost if possible)
- It may sound cliché but it works! Recycling saves resources and CO2 in a few ways. Many materials like aluminum and steel take lots of energy to dig ores out of the ground and refine. Recycling these materials saves huge amounts of energy, keeping huge amounts of CO2 out of the air. Composting keeps waste out of landfills where it can break down into methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.
Low cost investments
- CFLs
- Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs (CFLs) are a more efficient way of lighting your home. They are more expensive than traditional incandescent bulbs but because they are so efficient they will save you money over their lives. Traditional lighting accounts for a large portion of household electricity use, but CFLs can reduce this by up to 75%, saving you an average of 7.5% on your electricity bill. Some people report savings of up to 20% on their electric bills. –> Check out much you could save!
- Wrap it up!
- Wrap your water heater. Imagine standing outside without clothes on in 50 degree weather. This is what your water heater is feeling every day without a blanket. Wrap it up!! For just a few dollars you can wrap your water heater in an energy saving heat blanket, saving cash and keeping CO2 out of the air.
- Low flow shower heads
- Switching out old shower heads for new low flow models can drastically reduce your water heating bill, and keep thousands of lbs. of CO2 out of the air each year.
- Programmable thermostat
- Think of this as your own personal energy-saving servant for your furnace or AC. You can set it to turn down/up the temperature in your home when you aren’t around and to automatically bring the temperature back up/down just before you come home. It responds to your every beck and call throughout the day and many even allow you to set different temperatures and times for each day of the week. These things are cool and easy to install, so get one today and start saving CO2 and $$.
- Keep your system maintained!
- You’ve probably had the air filter in your car changed at some point, well how about the air filter in your AC unit?? And that furnace, has it been tuned up recently? Keeping your heating and AC system maintained helps it to be more efficient, reducing fuel costs.
- Seal up those drafty windows and doors.
- You wouldn’t leave a door open in the middle of the winter right? Well take a look under your door. If you can see through to the outside, picture dollar bills blowing through. Plug up those leaks! Use caulking for leaky windows and get a door “sweep” to keep the heat in your house and CO2 out of the atmosphere.
- Transportation
- Keep your auto tuned up and the tires properly inflated. Don’t leave that junk in the truck either. All that extra weight is killing your gas mileage, so leave those cinder blocks at home where they belong.
Long Term Thinking
- Size it right
- The most important component in reducing your long term energy use is sizing what you buy to match what you need. Behind every long term decision to purchase anything should be a conscious decision to size it right, not too big not to small, but just right!
- Housing
- Are you planning to purchase a new house, or to move into a new apartment? Think about how much space you actually need. We aren’t saying you need to live in a cave but you should carefully consider how much space you really need. If you buy something bigger than what you need not only are materials being poorly utilized in the construction, but you will be committing yourself to larger energy bills each year. Larger buildings no matter how efficient take more energy to heat, cool and light and that means more CO2 emitted from your home.
- Building / Renovating a home?
- Choose an architect who has experience designing green buildings. This does not mean sacrificing comfort. In fact today the most energy efficient homes use 75% less energy than the average home, saving you big bucks. Think about building to LEED standards. Just remember its always easiest to design efficiency in from the beginning than to add it later. Investigate solar thermal, photovoltaic and small scale wind. They might make sense for, but in any case you’ll come away with an education in renewable energy sources. A solar system might not be too expensive if you’ve already cut you energy use by 75%!
- Buy the most efficient appliances you can get
- When you plan to purchase new appliances always buy energy star qualified products. But don’t just settle for Energy Star – pick the model that uses the least amount of energy possible. If you don’t need a full sized refrigerator don’t buy one.
- Your car
- This might be obvious, but it is important because driving causes so much CO2 pollution. When choosing a car decide how big a vehicle you need then try to pick the most fuel efficient model in that class. Think about a hybrid but don’t buy a hybrid as an excuse for purchasing a larger vehicle than you need. When given a choice in engine size go with the smaller more efficient model. You’ll save money upfront and at the gas pump week after week.
- Get a professional energy audit
- While there are lots of easy things you can do around the house yourself, a professional energy audit is still a good idea. Many professional energy auditors report that their customers save up to 30% on their energy bills.
- Where you living is important
- Deciding to where to live is obviously a personal decision, but please keep the climate in mind. Choosing to live in an area where you can walk to work, schools and the grocery store can save you hundreds in gas bills per year and keep tons of CO2 out of the air. You might even find that you don’t need a car at all, saving you thousands of dollars.
- Plant trees
- If you are really in it for the long term think about planting trees, shrubs and bushes around your home. If you live in North America planting trees on the northern side of building can help to reduce heating costs. Trees that provide shade in the summer can also reduce cooling costs. In addition to the energy benefits trees can provide they remove CO2 from the atmosphere as they grow. Over their lives trees can sequester large amounts of carbon in the ground and in their biomass, however when trees die much of this sequestered carbon is re-released into the air.
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