Energy saving ideas? (Inconvient Truth)?

Question

The week before last my bf and I where having a movie night on the coach. A friend had lent us the incovient truth. We watched it and I think the only coment that was made was, my god, how did bush win against him. But then we went to bed. I dreamt about the drowning polar bears and ice caps. Nothing was done.Then last week my other half was asking me to come watch something, He had tapped the al gore interview in regards to apec. At this point we had a bit of a talk and decided that we wanted a better future especially if we decided to have kids. We are only in our 20s and we rent our house so we arnt very sure now what else we can do to reduce our carbon emissions?

So far we have:
- Bought 'green shopping bags'
- changed our electrisity to hydro and wind
- Changed to energy efficant light globes
- planted and tree each in the back yard.

Any other surgestions would be most aprecated.

Answer 1

For you information Al Gore's house in Tenn. uses about 2,400 dollars a month worth of energy.
George Bush's house on his ranch in Texas using 0 dollars a month in energy. Gets his electricity from solar energy. House is designed and built to be totally energy efficient and self sufficient.
That being the case Al Gore must not be all that concerned about it.

Answer 2

We replaced every light bulb in our home with compact fluorescent bulbs. Hang our laundry outside to dry. Tinted windows. Replaced the weather stripping around the doors. Put up heavy drapes with rubber backing. Put a water heater blanket around the water heater. We reduced our electric bill by over 70% from last year! No joke 70%. You can put more insulation in your attic. Fut a foam ring under all of the face plates to your light switches and electrical outlets. Use a rotary human powered lawnmower they are called (reel mowers). Walk or ride a bike when you can. Recycle everything you can. Buy products made from recycled materials. Buy locally produced products. Use a wheel edger to edge your lawn. Only wash full loads of laundry. Only run full loads of dishes if you are going to use a dishwashing machine. Wash your dishes by hand. Buy vintage or second hand items. Plant things outside and grow plants in your home. Make sure you turn things off when not in use. Keep your airconditioner set at a constant 78 degrees. These are just the tip of the iceberg of what you can personally do to help you conserve energy and help the planet. I live in Austin Texas recently voted the 2nd greenest city in the U.S. these are the things that top the list of what residents here do. I wish I could change to wind power but we dont get enough wind. Solar is just too expensive right now.

Answer 3

Put everything that is not vital on power strips. Then shut them off before going to sleep. When your shut most devices off they still use between 2 and 20 watts of power every hour.

When I build a house for myself in a year and a half I will wire 2 way switches for the outlets in the house. One switch will be in the room and it's pair in a central control box so I can shut down the house every night before sleep.

This will save between 10 and 40 percent of most people's power bills.

Answer 4

Good for you, keep it up!
Here are some tips......
You can comfortably reshape your life using simple methods like these. They are logical, doable, inexpensive, and all together combine to help you live a life as a caretaker instead of as an exploiter of the earth. What better way to live?
SIMPLE SOLUTION:
1. If you have room for a garden, or can join a public garden, grow some of your own food using organic methods.

2. Buy organic, recycled, and other Earth-friendly products instead of conventional ones, even when they cost more.

3. Set the heat ten degrees cooler and the air conditioning ten degrees warmer, replace high-wattage light bulbs with efficient ones, and make a habit of turning off anything that doesn’t actually need to be on.

4. Improve your home’s heat efficiency by adding insulation, installing insulated window coverings, weather-stripping doors, and putting gaskets behind electrical outlets.

5. Put flow restrictors on your faucets and showerhead to save water. If you can’t replace existing toilets with a low-flow version, place a half-gallon jug full of water in the toilet tank to reduce the amount used in each flush.

6. Never buy anything on impulse. If you think you want something, wait at least twenty-four hours and see if you still want it then.

7. Plant trees whenever and wherever you can, and tend and water them until they can survive on their own.

8. Take a hard look at the electric or gas-powered devices you own. How many could you replace with low-tech equivalents, or simply get rid of? Gather up any that can be replaced or discarded and donate them to charity.

9. Contact your local water, electricity, and heating fuel utilities to find out what conservation programs, rebates, and incentives they offer, and use of them.

10. Shop at a local farmers’ market or join a community-supported agriculture program.

11. Learn how to entertain yourself and your family and friends instead of letting an energy-wasting machine do it for you. Television and computer games are no substitute for life!

12. Instead of a grass lawn, landscape with plant species are native to your area. Local conservation groups can tell you which plants support native butterflies and birds.

13. Whenever you possible can, walk, bicycle, carpool, or take public transit instead of driving a car.

14. Replace chemical cleansers, laundry detergents, and garden compounds with natural or biodegradable equivalents.

15. Take care of as much of your everyday health-care needs as you can using natural methods. Modern medicine is among the most wasteful and polluting of all industries.

16. Live as close as possible to work or school so that you minimize the time and energy wasted in commuting.

17. If you’re building a home, include as many Earth-friendly elements in its design and construction as you can.

18. Compost all your yard waste and vegetable kitchen scraps in a composter or worm bin, and return the compost to the soil.

19. Recycle everything you possibly can.

20. Donate old clothes, housewares, and appliances to charity, or find other uses for them instead of throwing them away.
Just to name a few. For more green living tips visit the link below.
Become a member of Care2.com the web site is all abut green living. THere are even petitions to sign that will help save the polar bears, Seals, planet.
Peace
GG

Answer 5

did you know that the power companys produce over 45% of the problem and china is the world worst thay plan to open 16 new plants next year.
how much do you pay your power company 200-300 month you can now go solar for no cost to you no hardware to buy---- no permits to file----no upkeep--- and to will save 100 to 200 a month on your bill.
you also get a lock in rate for 25years how much has your bill goin up just last year?
by you going solar over the next 25yrs your foot print will equal 440,000 trees or removeing 45 cars this is a win win for everone!
goto http://jointhesolution.com/royphillips...
check it out it won't cost you$ just to read about something real.
you can email me a i will help you every step of the

Answer 6

Fix the heat loss wrap the hot and cold pipes . To fix the creaking add a slip of soft plastic in the clamps on the pipe . To end the water hammer use an air pocket in the pipe design at the corners. I don't like on demand hot water i like to see warm water only. The stove is there.

Answer 7

Use cold water to do laundry, along with white vinegar instead of detergent.
Open curtains in winter to let the sun come in and help warm the house, and close them in summer to keep sun out.

Answer 8

If you want the environment to be clean, we MUST start with clean electric power. Power generation accounts for 70% of our air pollution.

Go to www.uspto.gov and enter patent number 5,430,333.

There you will see pollution free electric power able to be built to be more than 1000 times that of our largest Nuclear Reactor!

Plant Vogtle, our last Nuclear Reactor makes only 930 megawatts.

The first generation “baby” power plants from this new technology makes 1000 megawatts.

Vogtle cost $10 billion, 30 years ago.

These new power plants cost $2.5 billion in today’s money.

Vogtle is about to be retired, as are all our other Nuclear plants.

All the fueled power plants only have about a 30 life span.

The power plant design you will see at patent office site live well 100 years.

They burn NO fuel what so ever!

It costs more to demolish a Nuclear plant than to build one new!

The spent Nuclear fuel has a 25,000 year storage problem with no solution yet, and a tremendous cost that defies accurate estimation due to the very long time frame.

Nuclear power has been estimated to cost more $50.00 per kilowatt hour when the demolition and storage costs are applied.

Guess who gets to foot that bill, the tax payer!

Being fuel-less the design you see at the patent office has a cost of about 3 cents per kilowatt hour.

Coal fired power plants make 8 lbs of air pollution to run 100 watt light bulb for an hour.

There are NO cost estimations for the clean up of all that pollution.

We keep seeing in the news about coal miners dieing in cave-ins.

With the high cost of electric power being hidden for so long by our politicians using their abysmally poor judgment to allow this to happen in the first place. Then compounding the problem with their constant lying about it to all of us, and the problem now coming to light despite their best efforts to lie and hide it. We are now stuck with the costs of their abysmally poor judgment after their being “paid” by big power to lie to us about the scope of this problem for decades.

Call all your elected official state, local, and federal. Tell them you want the pollution free electric power you saw at the patent office web site! Tell them to get off their assets and get moving on making pollution free and cheaper electric power happen ASAP!

Or swallow their lies so more until our nation is so polluted our children die younger than ever before. Cancer is running rampant everywhere, it comes from all the pollution our elected officials are allowing to be spewed into “our” environment every day. It time to put pollution into it’s proper place, “THE PAST”!

We now have the technology, we can build it, it’s 100% clean, and the electric power is cheaper than ANY fueled power plant.

I almost forgot to tell you Al Gore knows all about this power plant and he did nothing to get it going. I did get a letter from him wishing me good luck and it's good to see others are working on our energy problem. Al is biggest hippocrate on the planet. All Al is doing is profiting from pimping the problem!

Answer 9

You may visit www.fypower.org/res/tools/energy_tips.html for some tips to reduce your energy consumption

Answer 10

You can reduce or stop using - spin dryer washer, and car share ( pool ) or cycle, or even walk to wherever sometimes ?
etc.
energysavenow.com