Nothing like good old-fashioned, self-inflicted, Catholic guilt to keep a guy honest when he’s doing his business.

That’s right, I started counting the squares of toilet paper I’d use each day. Got a problem with that?

I posted a piece of scrap paper right there next to the toilet, kept a pencil on hand, and tallied those suckers up before I even got off the pot. Kept me busy.

I did it with the full intention of making it an open-ended project (no horrifying pun intended), but ended up stopping after two weeks. The cool thing is, the record-keeping may be over, but the always positive enviro-guilt continues! I may not be keeping exact tabs on my wiping habits anymore, but I still pay attention to how much I’m ripping off with each swipe at the roll.

Ahhhh, yes… I can hear the forests sigh with pleasure every time I approach that glorious porcelain throne in the rear end of the house. That is the forests sighing, right?

Today I was able to successfully fix my daughter’s bubble machine (pictured).  Basically it is a piece of plastic with a couple of motors and a fan.  It stopped working about a month ago and we had started looking for a replacement at the stores.  Instead of pitching it and buying a new one I tried to fix it.

Using a volt meter and a screw driver I was able to determine that the problem was a loose wire on the ON switch.  Many problems do not requires a degree in Electrical Engineering to diagnose and fix.  Many problems can be solved with a little glue (super glue is great for plastic repairs).  After finding the problem, it was easily fixed using a soldering iron and some solder. It took about 20 minutes all in all and that was even with help from my four year old twins along the way.

Not everything is salvageable, but many things are.  I also took a part a favorite toy helicopter today that had a spinning rotor that wasn’t spinning anymore.  Unfortunately the problem was several broken motor mounts inside that would not hold up even to super gluing.  After pulling the electric motor and switch, which I hope to make into something else like a mini wind turbine in the future, the rest had to be chucked.

So the next time something stops working, spend a few minutes trying to figure out what is wrong and see if you can fix it.  Remember common sense and don’t get into something that is beyond your capability.  Gluing back together a wooden toy is an easy thing and will make a little one very happy after they thought their toy would never be the same.

Why do they draw power even when they are turned off?  A common reason is so that you can use the remote control to turn them on.

A good device/component, in my opinion, is one that uses the least power when turned off.  In the entertainment center world good is under 2W when off.  Bad can be >90W (WHEN TURNED OFF) and even 20W over time adds up very quickly.  With a few minutes and a power strip, I have been able to lower the vampiric load of my entertainment center by 40W, read on to find out how you can do the same and what this will save you over time.  

Steps to reduce the bite from your entertainment center:

1. Inventory the components in your entertainment center.  Identify which components you want to be able to turn on from the comfort of your couch (e.g., it is really nice to turn the TV on using the remote from the couch).  Identify those components that you have to stand up to use already (e.g. you need to get up to put in a VCR tape or DVD).  If you have a watt meter handy, (e.g. kill-a-watt) measure and record how much power each component uses when turned off so you can determine if it is worth it or not.
2. Plug those components, like the DVD player, that you already need to stand up to use into a power strip.  I am a big fan of saving energy without sacrificing quality of life and convenience first.  Once you’ve done all those things, then you can make harder decisions about sacrificing convenience to save the world.
3. Consider the remaining components. Are there any that you can live with needing to stand up to use? My favorite one to recommend is your cable box.  A cable box can use between 20-30W when turned off.  The fancier the cable box, such as digital and/or HD, the more power it uses even when turned off.   Who needs to use their cable box when their TV is turned off.  My cable box uses 29W when powered off.  We rarely watch TV directly through the cable box, so that was a no brainer for me.  Be careful with Digital Video Recorders (DVR), e.g., TiVo, because they need to be on to record the shows and they may be using the cable or satellite box to get their signal.  Also, some cable boxes have DVRs built into them, in which case if you want them to work, they need to stay powered up.
4. Turn off the powerstrip.  When you want to use your VCR, turn it on from the power strip, insert the tape and enjoy.
5. (Optional) Calculate your savings.  I’ll go into showing how to calculate your savings below.  For a few minutes of my time, I will be able to save 30 kWh a month or about $5.

Calculating Savings

1. Take the sum of the power savings from turning off those components, in my case that is 40W for the cable box (29W), DVD Player (2W) and VCR (9W).  
2. Multiply that times 24 hrs/day to get the energy savings per day (Wh)
1. Multiply by 30 days/month to get monthly savings
2. Or multiply by 365 days/year to get annual savings
3. Divide by 1,000 to get the answer in kWh (the same thing you pay the electric company based on)

3. Multiply your energy savings by your electric rate (e.g., $0.17/kWh) to get monetary savings.
4. Multiply your energy savings by 1.341 lbs CO2/kWh which is the average US emissions of CO2 for electricity generation from a DoE Report in 2000 http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/co2_report/co2emiss.pdf

My Example:

Monthly Savings

40W x 24hr/day x 30 days/month = 28,800 Wh per month
÷ 1,000 W/kW => 28.8 kWh per month
x 17¢/kWh => $4.90 per month
x 1.341 lbs CO2/kWh => 38.6 lbs CO2 per month

Annual Savings

40W x 24hr/day x 365 days/year ÷ 1,000 W/kW = 350.4 kWh per year
x 17¢/kWh => $59.57 per year
x 1.341 lbs CO2/kWh => 470 lbs CO2 per year

There are also sensing power strips out there that will turn off auxiliary devices when a main device is in standby mode.  For example the printer for a computer or your cable box, VCR and DVD Player for your TV.  I’ve not used one of these before, but they sound like they would be a nice marriage between convenience and saving energy.

By installing a low flow shower head and cutting your shower time to 5 minutes you can reduce your water usages and CO2 emitted by 70-80%.  I came across this tip as part of a community competition my family is participating in called the Energy Smackdown.   To get started, spend a week just measuring how long of showers you take.  Then try to reduce that to 5 minutes.  Once you start measuring your showers, it may be hard to not reduce them.  Don’t worry if you start taking shorter showers right away while establishing your base line. 

My wife and I discovered some amusing things about our showers.  Before we started tracking them, we both thought that I was taking the the long showers and she was taking the shorter ones.  It turns out that I was averaging around 6 minute showers and she was closer to 8 minute showers.  Now we’re down to around 4 minutes for me and just over 5 minutes for her.  Be sure to have fun doing it or you’ll stop.

If you need help with a low flow shower  head, check with your local hardware store.  They are very easy to install and can save tons of water.  The standard for low flow showerheads is 2.5 gallons per minute or less and some go as low as 1.6 gallons per minute.  That is a major improvement over the 5-8 gallons per minute for the non-low flow variety.

References:

What is a Low-Flow Showerhead?

Referenced from the Energy Smackdown challenge around 5 minute showers:

Gershon,David (2007), Low Carbon Diet, A 30 Day Program to Lose 5000 Pounds, Empowerment Institute, Woodstock, NY.

So next time your out somewhere and there isn’t a friendly recycling bin available, consider throwing the empty into your bag instead of the trash.

 And before anyone comments on it, I myself refill a bottle with water for the games.

Of those, how many have you read?

Who cares.

How many do you plan to read?

Who cares.

How many do you plan to read, and then go back and read or reference again after that? Those are the ones that I think are probably worth buying. The rest you probably could have gotten from the library and been just as happy.

Yep, the library. Remember that place from elementary school? They lend to adults too. Check it out. What they don’t have, they can usually get for you within a couple of days. And going there just makes you feel like a better person. I swear. It’s a real pick-me-up.

Plus, of course, reading and returning is also cheaper, and it means fewer trees cut down, fewer books shipped to every Barnes and Noble in the country — hence less oil and gas used — and less groundwater-polluting ink made and used.

Consider these facts about the environmental impact of the publishing industry (pulled together by Co-Op America):

The pulp and paper industry is the single largest consumer of water used in industrial activities in OECD [wealthy] countries and is the third greatest industrial greenhouse gas emitter, after the chemical and steel industries.

Most of the world’s paper supply, about 71 percent, is not made from timber harvested at tree farms but from forest-harvested timber, from regions with ecologically valuable, biologically diverse habitat.

Tree plantations host about 90 percent fewer species than the forests that preceded them. More on publishing’s impact on forests.

In order to make paper “brighter,” wood fibers are often bleached with chlorine or chlorine compounds. When these bleaching agents are combined with organic matter such as wood fibers, one byproduct is dioxin, a known human carcinogen….In the paper bleaching process, dioxin finds its way into the environment, contaminating water, soil, and our food supply. Dioxin bioaccumulates in the fat of fish, seabirds, and mammals, and it has been associated with cancers, lymphomas, diabetes, immune system disorders, and birth defects. More on the environmental impacts of chlorine, and some friendlier alternatives.

Lead, cadmium and barium are a few of the highly toxic heavy metals found in some inks and these can easily seep into the environment, contaminating our soil and groundwater. Concentrations of heavy metals in the human body have been linked to serious neurological disorders, particularly in developing brains. Petroleum products and solvents typically consisting of alcohol or different hydrocarbons are also common ingredients used in inks. Most solvents are toxic and nearly all release volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into the atmosphere as they dry. VOCs are a well-known culprit in the problem of ozone depletion. More on inks and vegetable-based alternatives.

So, my girlfriend’s got a bunch of art books on the shelf. I say, no problem. She flips through them every couple of days for ideas and inspiration. These are great books to have on hand.

But I’ve tried to purge my shelf of all the books that are just there to make me feel good. Seriously, so I read John Locke’s Treatises of Government in college. Who cares. Not me, not my girlfriend, and not the few people who occasionally circulate through my house. Send it to the used book store for the next college kid.

And I want to read The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan. I’ll order it at the library.

But I’m keeping my copy of Siddhartha, because I’ll reread it every time my life starts to spiral. Plus, it’s like, pamphlet-size.

Image: Parking garage at the Kansas City library. © jonathan_moreau (flickr)

I hate the thing — mostly because when I turn it off, it doesn’t cool off. Not for a few minutes anyway. Way inefficient.

But I’ve recently realized I can at least make the most of that annoying electric-stove characteristic by shutting it down a little early and riding the heat wave home to the finish line.

Tonight’s noodle soup, for example, required holding the soup at a boil for 3 minutes after putting in the noodles. Shut it down after 1, ride the wave for the last 2, and I’ve saved a bit of unnecessary heating there. I’m not sure how much energy is used to heat up those coils, but the whole soup-making process probably took about 8 minutes, start to finish. Since the last 2 were on residual heat, shutting down early saved 25% in that case.

Similar results for last night’s pasta.

Of course this doesn’t work so well for the giant pot of soup that takes 30 minutes to cook, but hey, it’s a little thing.

Recycling is nice, I suppose, if you’ve absolutely got to use and dispose of something. But the recycling process still uses up a lot of energy — and it’s nearly impossible to say how efficient the process is in any given locale. I recently asked Bry Lynas, OneClimate.net editor and OneWorld’s resident climate/energy scientist/guru, about the value of recycling versus burning paper and cardboard products. He says:

In some places, there may be minimum transport and highly-efficient use made of the waste whilst in others, the paper might be shipped to China for recycling or (maybe this is an ‘urban myth’) tipped into landfills anyway! And that’s what makes your question so difficult to answer. And it’s why I tend to use most of my paper and cardboard either in the stove or in the compost.
Click here to weigh in on that discussion.

And of course every new product you purchase means more energy is needed to produce it and to accumulate the materials that go into it.

If it’s a wood/paper product — like your daily coffee cup — that also means more forest land has been cut down — and CO2 released into the atmosphere.

Other materials could require mining, which often destroys landscapes and pollutes rivers and groundwater. According to EARTHWORKS, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting communities and the environment from the destructive impacts of mineral development:

Mining enough gold for a single ring creates 20 tons of mine waste. To extract the huge volumes of waste rock and ore necessary to produce the gold/silver/copper, most modern mines are enormous open pits. These pits often exceed 1 mile in diameter and 1,000 feet in depth. Some, like the Bingham Canyon mine in Utah, are visible from orbit. The pollution impacts of these operations are proportional to their size: according to the EPA, hardrock mining is the number one toxic polluter in the United States, and has polluted 40% of the stream reaches of the headwaters of western watersheds.
More on mining

And plastics… of course plastic is a petroleum product. So that means even more oil than what’s already needed to produce the energy to create, ship, and sell the product. With oil, of course, come a whole host of negative consequences (from war to displacement of local people to environmental destruction). According to Oil Change International, a non-profit organization working to highlight the true price of oil:

Communities and the environments around them are often subject to seismic explosions and forest clearing during [oil] exploration, the production of toxic drilling muds and waste waters while drilling takes place, and then routine gas flaring during oil extraction. Oil spills from pipelines, tankers and tank farms and deadly dioxins from refineries round out the industries’ deserved polluting reputation….

Since the 1973 Arab oil embargo, successive US administrations have equated national security with access to, and control of, oil – particularly in the Persian Gulf, which holds two-thirds of global oil reserves. In other words, as long as we need oil, we need the Persian Gulf. Faced with this unpleasant fact, every President since Carter has chosen to defend US “access” to the Persian Gulf….

Scholars have examined the relationship between corruption, authoritarian governments, governance, conflict, and extractive industries, and have found strong evidence for a ‘repression effect’, which holds that resource wealth retards democratisation by enabling the government to better fund the apparatus of repression.
More on the true price of oil

And who knows what it takes to turn oil into tupperware (or other plastic products), but it can’t be a simple and painless process. Surely more pollution and energy used there.

So what’s the point here? All these negative consequences can be avoided by simply not buying something new — whenever possible. Hence “reduce.”

If you must buy something new, at least try to get as much use out of it before purchasing another one. Thus, “reuse.”

A few simple suggestions:

For starters, if you drink coffee or another beverage outside the house even on a semi-regular basis, get a reusable cup. I’ve used my coffee mug for orange juice, soda, water, and coffee — I’ve used it in coffee shops and movie theaters alike.

Don’t buy bottled water unless you’re already out and about and have no other choice. And in that case, why not stash that bottle, take it home, and get as much use out of it as possible.

Or try bringing your own tupperware to the bakery — save a bag or a box.

And please, don’t buy tupperware. Put your leftovers in an old pasta-sauce jar. Or if you ever order take out Chinese or other food — save the containers. Reuse. And when you’ve accumulated so many of those little buggers that you just can’t keep them all in your cupboard anymore, look into donating them to Goodwill or another second-hand store, where someone else can buy them cheap to keep them in use.

And then, when all else fails, of course… recycle it.

Some 130 million bikes were produced worldwide in 2007 — more than double the number of cars rolling off assembly lines (52 million). Bike production took off in the 1970s, and after a brief dip, has been soaring since 2001.

So, why don’t you hop on and get with the cool kids. It saves gas, which saves money and reduces your CO2 emissions. It’s healthy for the body and, frankly, for the mental state too — especially if you’re like me and you spend too much time in an office chair each day.

According to the League of American Bicyclists (via Co-Op America), 40% of Americans’ car trips are 2 miles or less. On any nice day, that can easily be done by bike. I’ve just put a rack and saddle bags on my bike. Now I can ride to the coffee shop, supermarket, and video rental store.

And if you’re really into the idea, think about converting to a “human-electric hybrid” bike. It’s really not that crazy an idea — I saw one parked outside my supermarket in Denver the other day.

In case you’re interested, here’s a little more on the state of bicycle riding and bicycling policy in the United States, from that same OneWorld.net article:

The United States lags far behind this emerging trend, with less than 1 percent of workers commuting by bicycle. Overall, bike ridership has dropped by 32 percent since the early 1990s.

But, [the Earth Policy Institute report] notes, there are positive signs as well: “Aided by $900 million a year in federal funding for promotion of biking and walking for 2005 to 2009, the installation of bicycle facilities — including parking, bike-friendly roads, and designated lanes — is proceeding at a record pace” in the United States.

Several large cities, including New York, plan to double bike and pedestrian routes by 2030. Washington, DC is set to begin a bike-sharing program like that in Paris, and even hilly San Francisco is considering a similar program, according to the Worldwatch Institute, and environmental think tank.

Bicycle advocacy groups are expanding, and a “Complete Streets” movement has blossomed in recent years, bringing together a broad coalition of citizen and environmental groups demanding more pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly roads. Six states and more than 50 cities, counties, and metro regions have now enacted some form of Complete Streets legislation.

(Image © FrizzText [flickr])

Consider the land and energy needed to grow the cotton or whatever else. Then the harvesting and transporting of that cotton to a factory, where it is made into cloth. Then the transporting of the cloth to another factory — maybe halfway around the world — where it is made into a shirt or a pair of shorts. Then the transportation across the world to your Gap store. That’s a lot of energy for a pair of shorts.

Now consider what it takes for me to get a used Gap sweater or some shorts. Someone in Denver realizes they’re just not going to wear that sweater anymore that Aunt Linda bought them for Christmas last year. They drive it down to the local Goodwill. Someone prices it and puts it on the shelf. I drive down to the same Goodwill a week later, buy the sweater, and take it home.

By buying used, I keep a sweater in circulation here in the States, I keep it from being sent back to Bangladesh or Malawi to be re-sold there for a dollar, and I lower demand (and therefore supply) for new sweaters, which span the globe before getting onto my back.

And I probably saved myself about $30.

I know — you’ll say it’s just weird to wear things that other people have sweat in. Well, all I can say to that is, get over it. One washing gets out all the germs, all the sweat, all the dirt that that random person put there. I’ve been wearing used clothes for several years now, and I haven’t gotten a single weird disease.