Ditching your super-sized SUV and remodeling your entire home for solar energy are great ways to go green, yet for most people it’s not feasible due to the high costs involved. Going green doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. From using cloth tote bags to un-plugging your computer at the end of the day, there are many inexpensive ways to go green.
Buy a few cloth tote bags. Plastic, if misused, can be harmful to the environment. Purchasing a few cloth tote bags is one inexpensive way to go green. Cloth tote bags can be purchased for a few dollars at your local supermarket store.
Go paper free. Canceling your newspaper subscriptions and instead reading the news online is one way to go paper free and save the environment. Another inexpensive way to incorporate green living into your lifestyle is to pay your bills online.
Take showers, not baths. If you’re the type of person that enjoys baths, stop. It’s a common fact that baths use more water than showers, therefore opting in on taking showers instead of baths is one way to go green. Another excellent way to conserve water is to install a low-flow showerhead.
Install energy saving light bulbs. Not only are energy saving light bulbs earth friendly, they’re also inexpensive. Changing your old light bulbs to energy saving light bulbs is an inexpensive way to go green.
Purchase second hand goods. Visiting your local thrift stores and yard sales is a surefire way to incorporate green living into your life. Not only will purchasing second hand goods save you money, but you’ll also help save the environment by keeping the second hand goods out of the landfill.
Use natural cleaners. Using natural cleaners, like baking soda and vinegar, to clean your home is an inexpensive way to go green. Store brand cleaners are usually expensive and feature harmful toxins that could hurt the environment.
Un-plug your computer at the end of the day. Un-plugging your computer at the end of the day is an inexpensive way to go green. While your at it, be sure to un-plug your television, microwave and any other small appliances to conserve as much energy as possible.
Buy in bulk. Purchasing your items in bulk can be a bit costly up-front, yet in the long run it’s still considered an inexpensive way to go green as you’ll save time and money. Buying in bulk will also help you save the environment by decreasing your carbon footprint.
Shop at your local farmer’s market. Shopping at your local farmer’s market is a smart way to go green as you’ll usually find healthy foods at an inexpensive cost. Not only will you be able to save money and help save the environment by visiting your local farmer’s market, but you’ll also support your farmers by purchasing your foods locally.
Ditch the vehicle and opt in on public transportation. It’s common knowledge that vehicles hinder the environment by producing harmful pollutants. Ditching your vehicle and instead opting in on using public transportation is an inexpensive way to go green. Not only will you help save the environment by using public transportation, but you’ll also end up saving money and time.
We strongly recommend the book to anyone involved in renewable energy. It is arefreshing view on the role of renewable energy in our future … Truly informative, and best of all it’s free.
Admin
A few reviews of this book;
The quest for safe, secure and sustainable energy poses one of the most critical challenges of our age. But how much energy do we need, and can we get it all from renewable sources? David MacKay sets out to find the answer through a forensic numerical analysis of what we use and what we can produce. His conclusions starkly reveal the difficult choices that must urgently be taken and readers interested in how we will power our society in the future will find this an illuminating read. For anyone with influence on energy policy, whether in government, business or a campaign group, this book should be compulsory reading. This is a technically precise and readable account of the challenges ahead. It will be a core reference on my shelf for many years to come.
Tony Juniper Former Executive Director, Friends of the Earth (England, Wales, and Northern Ireland) and Vice Chair, Friends of the Earth International
Common sense, technology literacy, and a little calculation go a long way in helping the reader sort sense from nonsense in the challenges of developing alternatives to fossil fuels. MacKay has provided a high priority book on a high priority problem.
William W. Hogan Raymond Plank Professor of Global Energy Policy
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
MacKay’s book is the most practical, solidly analytical, and enjoyable book on energy that I have seen. Through a grounded yet playfully quantitative approach, MacKay illuminates the daunting challenges associated with possible paths to sustainable energy. This heroic work gets the energy story straight, assessing the constraints imposed by physical reality that we must work within. In so doing, MacKay delivers creative and useful tools so that we may quantify, visualize, and compare our energy options on a personal scale, deciding for ourselves what adds up. Like cold water on the face, this book snaps us out of our fossil fuel delirium and makes it clear that we must get to work if we want to maintain an energy-intensive lifestyle.
Tom Murphy Associate Professor of Physics,
UC San Diego
There is a growing trend in our world today toward using cleaner, and more importantly, renewable resources. It is really no longer just a question of if we will eventually run out of oil, but when. Even so, our responsibility to help the environment has become more important now than even before. Even if the earths fossil resources last another 100 years, the time to do something is now, not later.
The most recent trend has seen more and more home owners looking at renewable energy to provide at least some of the power needs for their home. This has become a necessary and logical step in our evolution as a society, and a sound economic choice for todays homeowners. What are some of the renewable energy methods that can be used to provide power for your home? Let’s take a look at a few of the more common choices.
1. Solar Energy
Everything on the planet is powered by the sun in one form or another. The food on your table is the result of solar energy, and our civilization would perish without it. So the move to solar power makes perfect sense. Solar power can be used in different ways. You can run your home directly off of your solar panels on a sunny day, and rely more on the power grid to provide the electricity when the sun is down or on very cloudy days. When your solar panels are operating, any energy you are not using or storing goes back into the meter and into the power grid. This has the effect of actually causing your meter to spin backwards when you are using less power than you are producing. The second and most common method is to have your solar panels continiously charge a series of deep cycle batteries that your house will draw power from when the sun goes down. Again, any excess energy produced can be fed back into the grid and sold back to the power company.
2. Wind Energy
This renewable energy source is best used along with the solar power methods described above. In stormy weather, for example, the sun may not be shining through the cloud layers, but the wind will probably be blowing, and vice-versa on sunny days. This can help balance out the renewable energy sources which are available, and result in more power production.
3. Geothermal Energy
Geothermal heat pumps use the relatively constant temperature of the ground or water several feet below the earth’s surface as source of heating and cooling. In this instance, geothermal energy is not so much a producer of energy but an energysaver. And since a great deal of energy is consumed to heat or cool the average home, then this could be a very good option for you. When used either in conjunction with solar and wind power, or on its own, geothermal energy can easily save you thousands of dollars each year on your energy bills.
Since about 30% of your energy costs (on average) is for heating water, using the free power from the sun to assist in this task makes perfect sense, and it is a great first alternative energy project for the energy conscious individual.
Solar Water Heaters have been around in one form or another for hundreds of years. The designs built in the late 18th and 19th century consisted of bare metal tanks which were painted black and then placed to face the sun to absorb heat. These types of early solar water heaters took a long time to heat water on a sunny day and quickly lost the heat when the sun went down. Later on, designs were improved upon by putting the tanks inside an insulated box. However, most of the heat gained was still lost at night, just more slowly.
The inventor William J. Bailey created and patented a (passive) solar water heater design in the early 1900’s that took advantage of the fact that water becomes less dense when it is heated. His idea was to make improvements upon the solar collector itself and incorporate a separate insulated hot water storage tank. He redesigned the solar collector and made it very thin.
His system utilized an array of black painted riser pipes that were connected to a header pipe, which were then connected to a black metal plate where the heat from the sun rays were absorbed into the metal.
In summary, there are two basic types of Solar Water Heaters for you to consider: Passive Solar Water Heaters & Active Solar Water Heaters. Active systems utilize a circulating pump and some type of temperature control whereas a passive system does not have any moving parts and relies on the basic principle of physics - that hot water rises & cold water falls.
Here are a couple of links to guides for building your own passive solar water heater system..
If you aren’t interested in spending the time putting it together from scratch, here is a link to some Solar Hot Water kits and components. Even though this is a much more substantial up front investment, these are more efficient designs which will offer you a considerable energy savings. And the system will pay for itself in a reasonable amount of time.
It seems like our winters are getting colder and our heating bills are getting higher. It turns out that we, and our houses are a big cause of environmental change because all of the heating that we do in the winter as well as the lighting of our houses. This along with air conditioners in the summer produce as much as a third of the carbon dioxide that is released into the environment.
Let’s talk about some ways that you can winterize your home this season and become little more green in the process.
The first thing you can do is to lower your water heater to 120°. You can actually lower it even more but most people find this to be the most comfortable. If you have it any higher you are risking the danger of burns from hot water. You want to be careful with this. especially if you have any little ones in the home.
Wash your clothes in cold water. Not only does this lower energy costs but your clothes will not fade as quickly. Many clothes fade after the first wash and after as few as the 10th wash, they don’t look like the original item. The color in your clothes will last a lot longer if you wash in cold water.
If you dry your clothes halfway in the clothes dryer and then hang them up for the rest of the drying time, you will be saving a lot of money as well as your clothes. All the hot air from the dryer is just blown out through the exhaust say you don’t get a benefit of that.
Make sure you turn off any lights in rooms that don’t have any activity. As you have bulbs burn out, replace them with compact fluorescents which will last much longer and take much less energy to light your home.
Take a tour of all of the windows, doors and other areas where you might be leaking heat from the home. Seal up these areas with weather stripping and other products from your home improvement store especially made for weathering your home.
Programmable thermostats help save a lot of money for homeowners and they are not difficult to use or install. If you are not very savvy about these sorts of things, have one installed by a professional and have them show you how to use it including programming the thermostat. If you have an idea of what temperatures you like your home to be during the different seasons as well as night and day, have the installer program the thermostat for you.
Insulate your hot water heater. These make a big difference regarding how much a hot water heaters have to work and consume energy in order to keep water warm for you. They are inexpensive at home improvement stores and are easy to install.
Insulate your attic. You can save as much as 2,142 pounds of CO2 in one year just by adding insulation to your attic.
Making your home or green for the winter has the double advantage of helping up the environment and lowering your bills. Most of the time after you have taken these actions you won’t have to spend money next year to replace them. In a short time greening up your home for the winter will pay for itself.
