Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Super Simple, Green Tips That Will Save You Money
In theory we all want to do our part saving the planet. It’s finally popular to be green. In practice, however, it can be challenging. You worry about the expense and time involved in making drastic changes to your lifestyle...
I think this is something a lot of us struggle with which is why I wanted to come up with a list of green tips that are super simple and will save you money.
5 Simple Things We Can Do that Make a Big Difference:
1. Install CFLs
This tips isn’t new or hard to do. I recently read that if every U.S. household replaced just one regular bulb with a compact fluorescent (CFL), the amount of energy saved could light 2.5 million homes for a whole year. These bulbs use less than a third of the energy of regular bulbs and last ten times longer, so you save money. You even save time because you don’t have to shop for light bulbs very often!
2. Turn Off the Lights
This tip is even easier and more cost-effective. It’s something most of us heard from our parents, “Turn the lights off in your room!” Since lighting is responsible for about 11 percent of a home's energy bills, flip the switch when you leave the room. Even if you’re using CFLs, no bulb saves energy like one that's turned off.
3. Turn Down Your Water Heater
I know you love your hot shower as much as I do. The thing is hot water heaters drain a lot of energy and a lot of you hard earned dollars. I refuse to advocate cold showers but by just lowering the temperature on your water heater from 140 to 120 degrees you can reduce your water heating costs by 6 to 10%. There’s an additional benefit to this tip if you have little ones, you don’t have to worry about them burning themselves when they’re washing their hands or are in the bath.
4. Download Your Favorite Music
CD cases are often made with polyvinyl chloride, which doesn’t recycle easily. By downloading new music you reduce production costs, packaging and CDs that eventually end up in the landfill. This saves money because instead of buying a CD because you like a couple songs, you can download just the ones you like best.
5. Drink Tap Water
Bottled water is convenient but millions of water bottles are thrown into landfills every year. You can filter your tap water and save money. You might even be protecting your health – they’re still debating the safety of plastic bottles.
These tips are so easy you can start implementing them this week! Please share any green tips you recommend that you’ve found to be simple and that save you money.
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1 comment:
Great Tips! I would like to add one more ‘green’ suggestion to the list – Save Water at home. Today, when fresh water levels in Southern California and many other parts of the world have dropped significantly, the need to conserve water is very important. BeWaterWise.com has a nice section on tips on how to save water, for both the outdoors and indoors - http://www.bewaterwise.com/tips01.html
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