It’s Not Easy Being Green
Like most typical North Americans I am caught in a constant battle. The fight between doing what’s good for the environment and still living out our consumer and technology driven lives; let’s face it, most of us are not willing to go off the grid.
Currently I sit at my desk typing this up, wearing a gigantic sweater because I refuse to turn the heat up in my apartment in the middle of May, even if it is only 14 degrees Celsius in here. These are the battles we fight.
So not surprisingly, there are plenty new tidbits and pieces of information flying around the internet trying to help people cope with their guilt complexes with easy, how to save the environment, instruction lists. It seems now that every other list I run across these days is trying to help people ‘green’ their lives. Not surprisingly you can come across some bad information.
Today I’m going to pick on Green.My.Wallet.
Now most of the tips are generally good, but some, like many things that seem good in theory, don’t quite pan out in real world.
Fluorescent bulbs are more affected by the number of times it is switched on and off, so turn them off when you leave a room for 15 minutes or more.
Now frequent turning on and off will shorten the life of just about any bulb, but if your going to be leaving the room for fourteen minutes at a time and decide to leave the light on you’ll be wasting far more money and energy than if you just turned it off. Even if you do have to buy a new bulb a little bit sooner.
When you rinse your dishes before you put them in the (duh!) dishwasher– you can be wasting up to 20 gallons of water each load. Plus, you’re saving time and the energy used to heat the additional water.
Well, first of all, rinse in cold, then you won’t be using extra energy for heat. Here’s the problem: dishwashers really are not made to deal with the bits of food left on plates and other dishes. Read any Maytag manual, they will tell you to rinse first. Many dishwasher detergent companies will also tell you that you should rinse first to get the best clean. If you don’t you’ll probably get all those lovely food particles left on your dishes, then you run your dishwasher again to get your dishes completely clean and suddenly you realize it’s not so energy saving. Once your dishes are finally clean, all those bits of food that you left on your plates will settle in the bottom of the dishwasher and clog the drain or gum up the rotating arms. Then you’re hiring a repairman; leaving little green in your wallet. Even if that worst case scenario doesn’t happen you’ll be left with the funky smell of rotting food in the bottom of your dishwasher. Mmm healthy.
Want to save the environment with your dishes? Kick it old school. Fill one side of your double sink with hot water and soap and the other with cold water to rinse. You’ll save heaps on both water and electricity. Just remember to work from your lightly soiled dishes (cups, glasses) to the heavily soiled (pots, pans).
Ignore cookbooks! It is usually unnecessary to pre-heat your oven before cooking, except when baking bread or pastries. Just turn on the oven at the same time you put the dish in.
I’m seeing thousands of dry pot roasts. Alright if you have a gas stove, feel free to ignore the preheat, gas stoves almost immediately apply high heat. Electric stoves on the other hand take a longer time to reach ideal temperatures. When you’re cooking meat products which have to reach a specific temperature, the longer it takes them to hit that temperature once exposed to heat the more the juices and the flavour are going to leech out.
Personally I recommend experimenting with your oven. My own is fairly crappy, it can take 20 minutes before it’s reached the set temperature but I find that after ten minutes of preheating it’s “warm enough” for pretty much any cooking or baking.
You can save thousands of dollars using cloth diapers over the course of three years, and even more if you use the same cloth diapers for a second child.
Of course this one is on using cloth diapers over using disposables. Now cloth diapers are generally more environmentally friendly, however you need to look around at your surrounding area. I know people are now saying, “What?” While you save the landfill from disposables; cloth diapers are hard on the environment when it comes to water, to the tune of the thousands of gallons you are going to use to wash them. Basically if you have frequent and/or harsh water shortages in your area, you might want to rethink the cloth.
Take short showers instead of baths.
I remember growing up and being told to take baths instead of showers to save water. There are several keys to this, first how long a ’short’ shower is to you and two, how efficient is your shower head. Generally for these little factoids, the ’short’ shower is five minutes and under. I don’t know about you but five minutes would consist of me only washing my hair. Get a water saver shower head, be as quick as possible. If you really want to be sure you are saving water, get a container that contains a gallon of liquid, a funnel and a stop watch. If it takes 30 seconds to fill the container, then you have a 2 gallons per minute flowing in your shower, that’s actually considered low flow: a five minute shower would use only 10 gallons of water. Some shower heads however use 3 or 4 gallons a minute. Have a 4 gallon a minute shower head and take a ten minute shower? Then you’re equaling about the same consumption as a bath.
Just remember that even when you are trying to do your best for the environment, think through things critically, and remember that not every tip will work for every situation.
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