Environment

What can you do to be environmentally friendly?

Perhaps the best way to answer this question really depends on who you are, where you live, and what you feel comfortable doing. Everyone should do their part to save energy and generally have as little impact on the Earth as possible, but in reality, people are lazy and careless. Here are my recommendations:

East coast living – do you live on the East coast? Do you pay over $600 per month in the winter months to heat your house? Here is my recommendation: MOVE. My electric and gas bills over 8 months combines equal 1 month of your oil bill. That is ridiculous and should not be the case. If you can’t move, then update your home’s heating to something a little more modern. But really…you should MOVE.

OK – now I could go through the South and talk about summer AC bills, winter heating bills, and using less electricity. And I could go through the mid-west, and north-west, but to be honest, I don’t really know much about living there and the cost of electricity. Here is what I do know…

Living in California has it’s positives and negatives. I am still trying to figure out the negatives, but here are my examples:

1. Programmable Thermostat - I bought one, I installed it, and it is super easy to do. It also saves a ton on the gas bill as you can program the heat (and / or AC if you have it) throughout the day and night.

2. Insulation / Roof Vents – We had insulation installed under the house to prevent the cool air in the winter and warm air in the summer from coming up into the floorboards. At the same time we had air vents installed in the attic to allow for heat to escape during the day and keep the house cool. Between the two installations, the average temperature upstairs decreased by 5 degrees and increased by 5 degrees downstairs, bringing the house temperatures much closer together, and almost the same. Not only does this make the house more comfortable, but it saves money by reducing the heat needed in the winter or a/c in the summer.

3. Light Bulbs – By far the biggest impact you can have on your wallet is by changing light bulbs. I have 10 cans downstairs and 6 small cans upstairs. To date, I have only replaced 6 downstairs and 2 upstairs from the old bulbs to the new energy efficient bulbs, and they all are dim able. The cost savings? The bulbs average $10 per and to replace 10 costs $100. The first month after replacing 1/2 the bulbs in my house my electric bill went from $96 to $45. This is not a joke…literally, I cut my bill in half just buy changing bulbs and paid back the bulb investment in 2 months. I can’t wait for the rest of the bulbs in my house to die…then I can be 100% new bulbs and reduce my cost further. I will let you know when that happens…

So to answer the question: what can you do to be environmentally friendly? That all depends on how much effort you are willing to put in, but even little effort, such as changing light bulbs can have a tremendous effect on your footprint, and bills.

Besides the above, I am looking forward to trying the following at some point in the future:
Composting
Reclaiming Water
Solar Panels
Astro Turf

P.S. We are now a double hybrid family which I am thrilled about.