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Living Green Part II
By clicking on the links on this site and this page, Living Green, you help me to continue to help others. Your purchases help me to publish and add to this site when you follow the links. Living Green Part I is right here!
I realize that making a lot of changes can be overwhelming. We're all human, afterall. Some changes can be easy and may not need a lot work or money- such as the change in lightbulbs. Make baby steps, but keep stepping! Every change makes a big difference-especially if many of us make the little changes. 9. Do you pots fit your burners? Matching your pots and pans to the size of the burner on your stove. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, cooking with a 6-inch pan on an 8-inch burner wastes 40% of the burner's heat. Using pots and pans with flat bottoms also use less energy because of the larger surface area. Aluminum and copper heat up faster, so cookware made of these use less energy. 10. Do you love your long showers? I do. If you simply cut your shower one minute shorter, you can keep as many as 170 poinds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere. Even I can cut back one minute-maybe even 2 minutes in an attempt at living green! 11. Store your foods in reusable containers with covers rather than foil or plastic wrap. Bonus if you wait until the foods cool before you put them in the freezer or fridge. Placing hot or moisture rich foods such as soup in the fridge or freezer, water can evaporate from them, adding moisture to the air inside. Your fridge then has to work harder to maintain its tempature. 12. Be sure and clean the lint filter before starting it up. If you are drying items with a lot of lint such as new towels, you may want to clean that filter out somewhere half-way through the cycle, also. You'll improve your dryer's energy efficiency by 30% and save about $40 a year on your utility bill. 13. Wash your clothes in cold water in order to reduce the washer's energy use by 90%. This also cuts your carbon emissions by 144 pounds per year. 14. Use ceiling fans. They use as little as 50-200 watts every hour and an air conditioner uses up to 3,500 watts. We like to use the ceiling fans to cut down on A/C use. Be sure your A/C unit is in the shade or at least shaded from direct sunlight. A unit in direct sunlight will work a lot harder. 15. with all the wonderful capabilities of phones now, using your phone or handheld device to send an email rather than your computer will save electricity. Just keep your computer off, if you can. A 'sleeping' computer using energy, by the way. 16. Switch to voice mail and dump your answering machine. A plugged in answering machine uses up power. Bonus: Choose a phone carrier that will go paperless for you. 17. Save the Earth by reading fewer books! Ah, less reading? No!!! Just change the way you read by simply downloading your books electronically. My favorite device is the KINDLE! This is my favorite new thing for over a year now. I'm not real technologically inclined, but I love this. sure and check this out. By clicking on the links on this site and this page, Living Green, you help me to continue to help others. Your purchases help me to publish and add to this site when you follow the links.
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