By John DeFore

Everyone knows that shade from the sun keeps you cooler, but a new study has quantified the benefit in a way homeowners might want to note. The right kind of shade, it turns out, can easily shave ten percent off your summertime electric bill.

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By Barbara Kessler
Our refrigerators, which can be the biggest electricity hogs of all household appliances, have been getting the once-over from the Energy Star program for several years now, with those bright yellow tags alerting us to what sort of electrical consumption we can expect. Washers and dryers, ditto.
Now our dishwashers, which have been [...]

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By Lynette Holloway

Jamie Swise, a Chicago-based weatherization expert, said President-elect Barack Obama made his job a whole lot easier when during a recent debate he urged Americans “to weatherize” their homes to save energy.

Obama made the appeal at a presidential debate last month before his election in response to a question about sacrifices his administration would ask Americans to make during these tumultuous economic times.

“Here you have the soon-to-be president of the United States stressing the importance of weatherization,” Swise said after the election. “He’s got a lot of people thinking about how weatherizing their homes can help save energy. You can’t beat that.”

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By John DeFore

Public awareness of “phantom power” usage — the way electronic devices use energy even when they’re turned off — may be growing, but it’s likely that awareness isn’t having a huge effect on consumer behavior. After all, most people plug their computer and home entertainment equipment into power strips tucked under desks and behind cabinetry, where accessing it to unplug devices is inconvenient.

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By Diane Porter

It waits, patiently, in a corner of the pantry. It knows that it goes out on Tuesdays, doing its good work with a load of diet Coke cans, glass bottles, newspapers and plastics #1 and #2. Salad bar containers make guest appearances, and once in a while a Tide bottle livens things up with its vivid orange and blue, but that’s about as exciting as it gets for the recycling bin.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. It’s the mantra of environmentally concerned people everywhere. Maybe you’ve gotten the third part of the equation conquered: If it’s glass, plastic, metal or paper, it goes in the bin. It saves space in the garbage and it saves resources for the planet. But what about the rest? Are you reducing your carbon footprint? Can you reuse more things than you do?

You can, easily, and here’s the best part: It will also save you money. Frugality gets its own cult-like devotion these days. In economically questionable times, anything that keeps a little more cash in our pocket is welcome. And while we’d all like to go out and buy hybrid vehicles and solar water heaters, it may be more practical right now to concentrate on small things that add up to make a difference.
The key is, don’t think you have to overhaul your life. Look around your house, be conscious of your routines, and find small changes that work for you.

“I think the important thing to remember, when trying to go green to save green, is that you shouldn’t try to change too many habits too soon,” said author Leah Ingram, who writes The Lean Green Family, a blog that tells how she (pictured left), her husband and their two pre-teen daughters have adopted a green lifestyle and saved money at the same time.

“Take it slowly, doing one thing at a time, kind of like when you might go on a diet or start a new exercise program,” Ingram said. “Take baby steps. Soon enough it will all seem like second nature.”

How small can a baby step be? Here’s how small: Milk in your cereal. When you’ve finished your cereal, do you drink the milk from the bottom of the bowl, or do you throw it down the drain? If you’re the latter, cut the amount of milk on your cereal tomorrow by about half. Make it a goal to have the cereal and milk end at exactly the same time. Just a fourth of a cup of milk saved daily adds up to close to six gallons of milk in a year. That’s six gallons’ worth of containers that don’t have to be out in the world, and a nifty $20-$30 in your pocket.

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By Barbara Kessler

Lance Armstrong may have to take his own advice and “dare to change” his life after being outed as the city’s biggest water guzzler, using a whopping 222,900 gallons of water in June, according to an AP report that appeared in the Austin American-Statesman late last week.

In July, consumption jumped to 330,000 gallons, putting him way out in front of the competition at about 38 times what the average household uses, according to the New York Times, which jumped onto the story.

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By Shermakaye Bass

When legislators cross party lines and governors publicly plead for water reform, you know the country’s water crunch has reached a new degree of direness.

And yet, some conservationists ask, who’s really listening?

In late July an Opinion column appeared in the Los Angeles Times and other California newspapers. In it, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, and senior U.S. Senator, Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, attempted to jolt water-hoggers into acknowledging that their state is in a full-blown water crisis.

The unlikely duo delivered frightening news: California’s largest reservoir, the Shasta Reservoir, is operating at only 48 percent capacity this year, and the state’s second largest water storage reservoir, Lake Oroville, has less water to spare than it has in three decades. California’s multi-year drought has allowed wildfires to gobble up more than a million acres this year. And job-loss has become a major factor, they say, noting that in two of the past three years, the Pacific salmon fisheries (which impact tens of thousands of jobs) have shut down because there just isn’t enough salmon for fishing.

In light of those facts, you have to scratch your head over why Americans, who consume two to three times the amount of Europeans daily, still squander water, the most essential thing to life itself.

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By Shermakaye Bass

While some Americans insist on pampering thirsty lawns and water-greedy flora - and engage in other water-siphoning practices - innovative means of conservation are cropping up all over the United States, out of necessity or sheer eco-sense. Some can be easily applied by individuals; others require input, or even a policy change, from water-service providers.

“In Marin County (CA), where I live, they take a fairly clever approach that’s driving behavior change. They tell you on your water bill how your water usage compares to last year’s,” says Jason Morrison, a water expert at the eco-driven Pacific Institute in Oakland, CA. “It’s information that’s very easy to read. You can also compare your usage to the county average and to the town average. That kind of information motivates people. Those kinds of policies allow people to become actively involved in utilities issues.”

Something else that’s helped California, as it fights to stay afloat during a drought, is the tightening of specs on new construction, for instance, requiring low-flow plumbing for all new homes. (Old-fashioned toilets use 6 gallons per flush, while the smart and modern ones only take 1.6 gallons or less.)

Water utitilies around the country are finding similar opportunities in conservation.

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By John DeFore

An item in the New York Times last week served as a good wrap-up of recent developments on the LED front, finding places (beyond traffic lights) where light emitting diodes are getting a toehold as replacements for less energy-efficient lights.

But does it, in newspaper terms, “bury the lead”?

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By Harriet Blake
Mainstream, affordable solar power is not just pie (or energy) in the sky. So say MIT researchers who have devised a process to store solar energy for use when the sun doesn’t shine.

Photo: Donna Coveney
 
MIT professor Dan Nocera
Massachusetts Institute of Technology energy professor Dan Nocera and post-doctoral fellow Matthew Kanan have found a [...]

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