Every little bit helps?
 

We've been through the Global Warming, and Blood for Oil, discussions many times. Usually by the end of the thread, most have wandered away because the extremes are the only choices left on the table

Global Warming comes down to either we ignore it OR move into caves and eschew all energy consuming devices.

Blood for Oil comes down to nuke 'em and take it OR ban all motor vehicles and heat your cave with decaying poop.

Well ok, it's not quite that bad but you know what I'm talking about.
I saw three print ads for cold water laundry detergent.
Now those are some startling numbers, and I've got questions about the wording and the claims, but I'll take them at face value for our purposes.

Anyway, it got me thinking, no matter where you stand on the Global Warming or Blood for Oil issues, there are ways to cut down on energy use. Little ways that don't require changing lifestyle (much), or radical ways of doing things. Tips that will help Mother Nature a wee bit, won't make you social outcast, and maybe put a couple bucks in your pocket at the end of the year.

Got any ideas you'd like to share? :yelgreedy

No idea where to start but....

Washing in cold water is silly. Try it and see. You waste so much energy/water/chemicals rewashing that it ain't worth it. If it's so "undirty" that it will come clean on a colld wash, IT CAN BE WORN AGAIN! This is not a crime. Really.

What you need to do is turn the damn light off in the laundry room while no-one is in there!

I'm confused--there are more people in NYC than in Chicago, why are the energy savings that much greater in Chicago? Maybe because most people in Chicago use hot water whereas New Yorkers already use cold water a lot of the time?

But aside from that... I spend most of the day (at home) with the lights turned off. With the blinds open there is more than enough light from the windows, even for reading.

Maybe you have a bad washing machine? I never wash in hot water (because we have a crappy water heater and my laundry loads always seem to conflict with someone wanting to take a shower) and everything always gets clean, including a wide variety of kid-induced stains and husband underarm smells.

You wash in cold water? I'm amazed but glad that it works for you. Thinking about it, we only wear cotton -I wonder if that makes a difference?

The chemical composition of the water and types of fabrics have a big effect on the outcome. Oh, brand of detergent also. ;)

Detergent composition is the most likely contributing factor to success in cold water.

Cheaper brands (and I dont mean el cheapo, just not the higher quality brands) really dont work, because they pad out the powder/detergent with crap, rather than enzymes that actually work. This is in cold water and hot water btw.

The lessor brands will make your clothes fade and the colours will seem duller because the fabrics arent as clean as they could be.

I dont have a problem with washing in cold water (although I prefer not too), but ONLY use a cold wash specific detergent and make sure it is one of the leading 3 brands that I know work.

One of my very best friends works in this industry.

Being in the middle of a super huge drought over here, we are all very conscious of saving water. I have plumbed the external water so it goes onto the lawns/gardens.

A friend of mine even catches the water in a bucket that goes down the drain (usually) whilst waiting for the shower to heat up, and uses it on her plants. Plus she empties all her daughters unfinished drinks (water) into the plants as well.

I'm currently reading about ocean wave energy, great idea!!

If everyone in New York would shut their freakin pie holes for one day the corresponding drop in CO2 levels would result in an average temperature decline equal to the square root of the probability of the Giants winning the Super Bowl.

If everyone in Chicago would leave their refrigerator door open for one day, the resulting temperature dip would cause that big chunk of ice that broke off from that other big chunk of ice to re-attach itself.

And then there's my idea to put Beano in cow feed...

We only wash in cold water as well. We have a Staber washer which really does a nice job and uses minimal amounts of detergent. Everything gets clean. We are a mostly cotton wearing crowd here. We also use an electric on demand hot water heater, so we are not heating water we don't use.

Yeah, we are cold water washers too. everything gets quite clean with 7th generation liquid detergent.

We've got a frigidaire front loader, and it barely uses any water at all to do a load. You have to be careful not to use too much detergent or it doesn't rinse so well. There is an extra rinse option, but we're just (usually) careful about how much detergent we use.

Footfootfoot, I just have to say, you have the most perfect sig ever.

if we sent one less cruise ship from LA to Hawaii, everyone in LA could use hot water to wash their clothes for a week?

I'm a relatively new single dad with a 16 yr old son so some of these ideas are especially great for me. A couple things I do are: 1) We never use the drying setting on the dishwasher and I wash on the normal cycle not pots & pans. 2) We keep everything electric off if I'm not in a room. 3) We wash everything in cold water with Tide except for the nastiest of whites which get a dose of oxiclean too. 4) We also dry most things for 20 mins or so, then hang to fully dry. 5) I installed a programmable thermostat recently and have it set to 62 while we are away and 66 when we are home. If you're chilly - put on a sweatshirt. So far no probs, but it has been really warm here.
Our electric bill the first month after all this was only $135 - thats considerably less than the $250 - $300 it used to be and we're helping the environment too!
Oh, and my son is doing very well adjusting to the new way of life. More money saved means more I can waste on him. He's got that concept down cold. :p

That's an interesting Idea. To get everybody on board, try to calculate and keep track of savings. Then when enough has accumulated, splurge as a group, treating yourselves to some fun together.

If you tell little Johnny to shut off the light in his closet, when it's not needed, because you need the savings to send him to college some day, I doubt if that will excite him. But promise to spend the savings a weekend at the beach, better chance he'll want to help. And the beach weekend is an outing as a family.

It doesn't even have to be all the savings, but some portion should be for rewarding the troops. :vikingsmi

Oh, if you chain smoke, light each butt from the last, save on matches and lighters.

Use toilet paper on both sides?

That doesn't work, but I find you can save by only using it every other time.

UT posted at 4:20. I'm just sayin.

Ya got to give it a day or two till you use the second side. ;)
I do buy paper made from recycled paper. I forget how many Gazillion trees would be saved if everybody used one roll of it each year of regular paper. But what they don't tell is the trees they're talking about are little scrub pines they plant and grow like weeds. But hey, they are trees. :D

tail-post, regarding "washing in cold water"
 

I only wash in cold water. Detergents are designed for use with cold water. My clothes washer is in the garage (1950s house retro-fit) hooked up to a bootleg water connection from my rear-porch water hose supply. In other words, there is only cold water running to it. My clothes get clean.

We use cold water for most of the laundry.

I got us PECO wind energy at home about a year ago, and we recently signed up for it at the workplace. It costs a little more at the moment, but not too bad--and they say the more people that use it, the cheaper it will eventually become.

Plus, we live within walking distance to most everything we need, and try to purchase local products and services as much as possible.

We use cold water for washing. We have solar power for our hot water. We have energy efficient lights in the house and only turn on the lights in the room we're in. Our outdoor lights are all motion sensitive so if you're not moving they go off (which can be spectacularly annoying at times). In Oz every toilet has to have a dual flush system so you only need to full flush to get rid of really nasty stuff. Our house has wooden floors so no need to use electricity with a vaccuum.

Oh yeah, I forgot - we bought fluorescent bulbs to go into most lamps and I'm not sure if we are saving or not but they seem to work just fine - anybody else try these?

I've been hearing rumors about our recycling system here in Delaware County.
Different towns (and cities) have their own programs in effect, to satisfy the state requirements. Some town collect only certain things but my town collects everything, metals, glasses(colors), plastics, newspapers, et al.
That makes it a losing proposition because there's virtually no market for paper and until recently very little market for plastic.
I don't think the glass market is very hot, so metals are the only thing that helps defray costs.
The state pays the town a small amount per ton collected of everything.

So I've been hearing they have been burning much of the paper and plastic, collected for recycling, at the trash to steam plant. That's where all the trash from the county gets trucked and burned.

Since China has driven the metal prices up by buying everything in sight, like Japan did leading up to Pearl Harbor :unsure:, the programs are doing better. But they are still burning stuff that was collected under the guise of recycling.
It also means part of the trash being burned is being collected by a much more time consuming and expensive method, to maintain the sham.

We live about 5 miles from Delaware and take a lot of our paper and metals there as they do not collect it here in my neighborhood - just glass & plastic. I figure if its recycled somewhere all the better. Kinda lame story. . . my recycling can which I paid $30 for was stolen on Friday. Some people are beyond lame.

For recycling tips, look to the scandinavians. They even recycle nappies!

Yesman, the compact fluorescents save quite a bit and give off plenty of light in ordinary fixtures. However, you can't put them on a dimmer, and I have dimmers on damn near every light.

I've been told they make dimmers for fluorescents, but they are expensive and use special bulbs. But I haven't investigated myself.

The compact fluorescents that are twisted up to look like a soft ice cream cone, work great in drop-lights for the garage or where ever you need one. I can attest to that. They seem to handle shocks better than bulbs with a filament. :thumbsup:

I was told you shouldn't use the dimmer function with them, but that if you just used that particular socket - you were fine. Makes sense, but who knows. You aren't supposed yo use regular bulbs in recessed lighting either and I've had them in there for years with no probs. not really sure what it all means though.

Well, recessed light fixtures usually use spot or flood lamps because they push the light in one direction, out. A regular bulb will waste much of it's light, not being able to find it's way out.
The other issue is heat build up in the cans makes the bulb operate at higher temperatures than they were designed for. That could shorten the life, or even break the bulb, I suppose, but hey, bulbs are cheap.
If you have a dimmer on those fixtures, turning it down just a little bit will drop the heat dramatically. ;)

Wal-Mart stumbled on a fact that those Edison base fluorescent lamps are probably the most successful energy saving product on the market today. Wal-mart was so enthralled by resulting numbers as to want to start a campaign to have all incandescent bulbs replaced by years end.

Then Wal-Mart got resistance. First from their supplier GE who did not want to convert so many light bulb factories to fluorescent production. So Wal-mart did what they do to some many suppliers who feared innovation (ie Rubbermaid). They threatened to go to the competition.

Wal-mart was so impress by how much these bulbs save as to propose step two: have the competition - Home Depot and Target - join Wal-Mart in a national program to make traditional incandescent bulbs obsolete. Both Home Depot and Target declined.

A classic incandescent bulb uses something like seven times more energy to achieve same light. They are that grossly inefficient. And yet even consumers will not use these bulbs because somehow their emotions dislike the shape of replacement fluorescent bulbs. Aversion to change – even when the light bulb is seven times more efficient – is that MBA.

We've got the compact flourescent bulbs in all our fixtures and lamps exept in the dining room where we have a dimmer switch. I mostly love them, but they do have an annoying high pitched buzzing noise that you can hear if it's very quiet and you are sitting close to them. Nobody else in my family can hear this buzz. I guess I have dog ears.

I hear the buzz and it is unacceptable.

It doesn't matter because in the future all light sources will be a combination of LED and some flat display technology currently used for monitors, such as OLED. Large panels of it should replace sections of drywall and display low-level ambient lighting. They will be able to change colors according to mood That is my position and I'm sticking to it.

Glatt - too funny, and I thought I was going nuts! I thought I was the only one that could hear that sound. I'm getting used to it so it doesn't really bother me anymore.
tw - I am having trouble understanding how Walmart took the lead in this - that just doesn't seem to float. Why didn't the manufacturer just go to other retailers or advertise directly to consumers??? Sounds like another conspiracy theory to me.

My wife can hear a high-pitched buzz outside Costco that's apparently designed to drive away pests of some kind.

Regarding flat lightsources, I've always wanted to mount a flourescent light source in the 16"s between the studs in a regular interior wall.

Prove it. Cite. You made the emotional decision that people don't flock to the savings because of shape and stated it as fact. You do that a lot.

Now, there are other reasons not to use those bulbs. One is, as I stated before, the inconpatability with dimmers. UT mentioned it too.
Another is the lamps with multi level switches or touch switches.
Also, the color of the light the bulbs emit is harsher.
I understand you don't think any of those reasons are rational, nor should my choice be based on anything but energy/money savings. And you think i should get all in a lather over a lightbulb that I can operate for 8 hours every day for what, 20 bucks a year?

Don't lecture me on how "if everybody". If everybody wore the same clothes and drove the same car....no, took the same bus...yada yada yada. I'm not everybody. Sometimes I don't even feel like being a part of everybody.

I'll buy bulbs based on the criteria I choose and you Vulcans can do what you want. :idea:

Those pests are loitering teenagers.

Now they use that same pitch as a cell phone ring so it goes off in class and the teacher can't hear it. If someone did that when I was in high school, blood would be spilled. So inconsiderate of other students.

I believe that particular cell-phone ring is from a hacked mosquito-repelling device or something.

I read that the sound came from some store that plays that high pitched noise to keep teenagers from loitering while not affecting the adults since they can't here it.

Grossly inefficient at lighting. However, they are excellent heaters! Almost 90% of the energy consumed goes into heat.

Well, not quite true. Most people I know, myself included (as well as I know myself) object to the color or quality of fluorescent light. As a photographer and former gaffer I am acutely aware of the qualities of light. That being said, I've installed a lot of compact and not so compact fluroesecents in and around my home. I have also played with using various colored gels to modify the color of the light.

As to the issue of dimmers, what Yesman said has been true in my exp. about using the lamp in a dimmable circuit w/o dimming. i.e. at 100% I've seen ads for dimmable compact fluroescents, but they are always OS when I get to the store.

Oh yeh. the LED technology is fantastic. I'm stoked.

seriously

We have switched to compact floresent in just about every lamp, the ONLY complaint is that the out side lites take a little while to get warmed up , I have been useing a floresent drop lite for YEARS , they are less sesaptable to breakage , cooler , and the lite is LESS sharp than incandesant blubs (easyer on the eyes in a dark scale pit ) , also you can warm up your hands ( a little ) with them . A year or two ago we got sideing ( with extra insulation ) Eglass windows ALL around (not cheap but our windows SUCKED( and leaked ) And I HATE painting a house !!!) , we can tell the difference onour utility bill last month it was $ 125, last years for this month was about $180 .

At one of my customers ( a steel mill ) they are grinding up old tires and injecting them into the steel , tires are about 80% carbon and 10% steel ( both of these comoditys they have to buy ) the State bought them the grinder and is giveing them a BIG tax break to try this , so far they are happy with the results , they go thru about a full barge of tires a day .

To appreciate how business works -to appreciate when innovation is stifled; read Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma. Markets demand new technologies from legacy companies only when the power exists to do so. That is what Wal-mart has been trying to do. Ironically, another company I have had so much respect for since it was called Dayton-Hudson, instead, fears to demand innovation.

That fluorescent bulb has been available for at least five years now. Their advantages far outweigh those so grossly inefficient incandescent bulbs.

Meanwhile how old is the technology? Fluorescent lamps had been demonstrated before Edison invented his bulb. The technology is that old.

What I do to save energy:

Switch off TV/ DVD at the plug every night and in the morning when I leave the flat
Same with the extension cord that powers my reading light/ hairdryer/ phone charger - only switched on when in use
Also phone charger removed from socket when not in use (as it's on a multiple socket cord)
Lights only on in rooms which I am in
Switch off cooker 5 mins before end of cooking time
As lightbulbs blow I am replacing them with energy efficient bulbs. My reading lamp (which I have on instead of the overhead, not as well as) has a bulb in it that outlasted both my marriage and subsequent relationship

I've just done a big wash, but next time I wash my clothes I will try cold water. I'm dubious as to whether it will work as I sometimes have to wash clothes twice even at 40 degrees. Feedback from this post suggests to me it's my washing machine rather than the temperature that's the problem though.

I also need to check out the recycling collection service again. When I moved in I kept putting the wrong things in the box and putting it out on the wrong day - it was never collected so I gave up. Without a car it's difficult to recycle anything myself, so I must make more of an effort to let the council do it for me.

In carbon footprint calculators I score well for not owning a car and not going abroad on holiday. This is usually hammered by living alone and things I cannot change in a rental property (baths not showers, no cavity wall insulation, old boiler etc). I would like to come and live in someone else's house to salve my conscience please.