It’s simple to save cash when you know where to look and know what to do.
By Reese Halter
This Earth week, you and your family can save money and make a big difference helping our environment by changing just a few habits.
The first step is to calculate how much energy you use at home, traveling and at work. We call this calculating your carbon footprint (carbonfund.org).
Once you determine how much you and your family are spending, it is simple to begin to cut back.
Reducing is the most important habit that we all easily can change. Reduce what you use by buying quality products. Quality products cost more but last longer, save you money (from not having to buy inferior products again); and quality products reduce the waste we are putting into landfills.
Reusing also makes good sense. Every year, Americans drink more than 100 billion cups of coffee. Approximately 14.4 billion disposable paper cups are thrown away — that’s enough cups, when placed end to end, to wrap around the Earth 55 times. Instead, get yourself a stainless steel mug, and you’ll receive a 10-cent discount from many coffee vendors. At five cups a week that’s a savings of $26 a year.
Atlantans already pay 108 percent more than New Yorkers for water, and the rates will continue to rise. Toilets consume an average of 20.1 gallons of water per person, per day in a home with no water conserving fixtures. That’s almost 30 percent of the average home’s per-person, indoor water use.
Consider installing low-flow toilets and shower heads, and conserve one person’s annual water use from 27,300 gallons to 12,500 gallons. You’ll notice an immediate savings on your water bill. Turn off the taps when you brush your teeth and only run the dishwasher when it’s full on the economy setting and save another $72 a year.
Forty percent of all car trips in America are less than two miles. Ride a bicycle or walk that distance and get exercise instead of spending fuel. By reducing just one-third of those less than two-mile car trips, you will have saved $215 at the end of the year.
The average home emits about twice as much CO2 compared to the average car. An energy audit will save you as much as 30 percent on your yearly bills, and Georgia Power offers a free walk-through to help you save money.
Roughly half of our home’s energy expense comes from heating and cooling. That means furnaces and air conditioning units must be serviced biannually and air filters changed at least twice a year.
By setting your winter thermostat to 68 and your summer thermostat to 78, you’ll save $225 a year. Also, put your clothes, after washing them in cold water only, out to air-dry and you’ll save an additional $225 annually.
Use a smart power strip and plug in as many electronic devices that have a stand-by mode in your home, turn off the power bar and you’ll reduce your power bill by an additional 5 percent to 15 percent. That translates into another $97 savings a year. Phantom electricity drawn from devices on stand-by mode across America wastes $4 billion of electricity a year.
Remember to turn off lights when you leave a room, shut down computers and printers when not in use, and unplug all cellphones, laptops, cameras, mp3 players and toothbrush adapters — save $105 a year.
This spring, help our beleaguered honey, bumble and solitary bees by not using any insecticides, herbicides, miticides or fungicides in your yard. In addition, plant yellow and blue flowers in large blocks, so as to provide a safe source of nectar and pollen for our bees.
Lastly, plant a tree for every member of your family. Trees reduce heating and cooling costs around homes and buildings by as much as 40 percent. They also suck CO2 from the atmosphere, filter stormwater runoff, purify the air and provide habitat for many urban critters.
Reese Halter is a conservation biologist at California Lutheran University.
Old-fashioned greed can motivate people to aid the environment.
By Lee Raudonis
Not to imply that Americans are not concerned about the environment and the availability of energy for current and future generations, but I sometimes think that environmentalists place far too much emphasis on the global benefits of being “green” and too little on the personal benefits.
Maybe it is more uplifting to believe that people are motivated by a concern for their fellow humans rather than by personal greed, but, with apologies to Gordon Gekko, greed can sometimes be good — especially if it motivates people to do something that benefits the rest of humanity as well as themselves.
One clear example of the convergence of being both selfish and green is the decision to purchase a more fuel-efficient automobile. It is clearly a good thing for the planet, but it also can be beneficial for the one purchasing the car.
Which argument do you believe will motivate more people to trade in their gas-guzzlers for a “greener” form of transportation — telling them that they will be helping save our limited petroleum supply for future generations or telling them that their new “green” car will not cost them a penny (or at least, very few of them)?
No disrespect to my fellow countrymen, but I would bet that a free car would trump a warm, fuzzy green feeling for most people.
A free car? Did you say a “free” car? Yes, that is exactly what I said. At the current cost of gasoline, an individual who drives 2,000 miles a month and trades a vehicle that averages 15 mpg on high-octane fuel for one that averages 45 mpg on standard gasoline can purchase his new hybrid for the amount of money he or she will save in fuel costs. In other words, he or she will receive a “free” car just for going green.
Don’t believe me? Consider that someone who drives 2,000 miles per month and gets 15 mpg, uses 133 gallons of fuel in the month. At $4 a gallon for high-octane fuel, the gas-guzzler owner spends $533 monthly on fuel.
Driving the same 2,000 miles in a car that gets 45 mpg would consume 45 gallons of fuel, and, at $3.75 for regular fuel, would cost $169, a difference of $364 per month or $21,800 over a five-year car loan — close to the cost of a new Toyota Prius.
Someone who drives 30,000 miles a year — not all that unusual in the Atlanta area — would use 2,000 gallons of fuel per year in a sport utility vehicle as compared to 667 gallons in the hybrid, a savings in dollars at current fuel prices of approximately $5,500 per year or $27,500 over five years. Can you say “free” car?
Sometimes I think that, although well-intentioned, many environmentalists do more to confuse people than motivate them to make changes in their personal decisions. Some of us who are not scientists may be willing to accept the possibility of global warming or climate change because the argument seems to have merit, but many others do not believe it has enough merit for them to make changes in their lives.
On the other hand, we can all understand what it means to get a car practically or entirely free. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist or a scientist of any type to explain that concept.
My advice to environmentalists: When you want to explain a “green” concept, remember that money is green, too.
Lee Raudonis, a former executive director of the Georgia Republican Party, is a communications consultant who lives in Big Canoe.
