A step a day keeps global warming away
Posted on Sep 28, 2007 and filed under Environment
Sometimes the simplest actions can have the most profound effects. A tiny nail can puncture a car tire and cause an accident. A handful of votes in Florida can change the course of history. And according to the infamous ‘Butterfly Effect’ even the beating of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil can change weather patterns across the US.
When we look at global warming, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of ways in which our small actions can help postpone the coming disaster. Too often people are intimidated by the enormity of global warming. Thinking of such vast and epochal changes can make our role seem insignificant or even unimportant. However, the road we are traveling down is propelled by countless individual choices, and if enough of these choices can be made for the good of the environment instead of for its harm, we may yet see some slowing of these troubling trends.
So the challenge is to help people identify the small changes they can make as a first step in the fight against global warming. Not everyone needs to attend a demonstration, or live like No Impact Man. Instead, try doing some of these steps yourself.
- Take the stairs. The average office elevator consumes 350 watts of electricity to travel from one floor to the next, according to the U.S. Department of the Interior. That’s enough energy to light a 100-watt light bulb for 3.5 hours.
- Unplug your chargers. According to the US EnergyStar program, the chargers for cell phones, laptops and other rechargeable devices can use up to 20 times more energy than the devices themselves! They continue to actively draw energy as long as they are plugged in, even if the device is fully charged.
- Unhook unused devices with remote control capability. 40% of the energy used by a TV in its lifetime will be used while it’s turned off.
- Change your thermostat. When it’s hot outside, remember that a room cooled to 75 degrees Fahrenheit uses more than 25% more energy than one cooled to 78 degrees. And when it’s cold outside, for each degree you turn down the heat while you sleep your heating bill is reduced by approximately 1 percent.
- Turn off the water before brushing. Every time you brush your teeth you use up to 5 gallons of water if you leave the water running.
- Take a bath. A typical bath uses about 25 gallons of water. A typical 5-minute shower uses 50. Consider installing a low-flow shower head to cut back on shower water useage.
- Switch out ONE light bulb. Replacing one incandescent bulb with a CFL bulb reduces the amount of carbon dioxide emissions by more than 1,000 pounds over the lifetime of the bulb.
- Skip eating meat for one meal. A pound of soy requires 250 gallons of water. A pound of beef requires an amazing 10 times that much water - 2500 gallons. The massive overuse of water doesn’t include the damage to other water supplies due to runoff from animal waste.
- Use a foam cup for your morning tea or coffee. This one is surprising, but did you know that for each time you use a foam cup, you use 1/1000th as much energy as is needed to produce one ceramic mug? That means you need to use a ceramic mug 1000 times before you are ‘breakeven’ with the energy usage of a foam cup - and that is assuming you use an EXTREMELY water-efficient dishwasher and don’t wash by hand. So if you use a foam cup for 3 cups of tea or coffee before disposing of it, it’s significantly less wasteful of energy than if you used a ceramic mug EVERY day for 8 years before it breaks or is disposed of! The energy needed to create (and wash) a ceramic mug makes it less friendly to the environment than you might think.
- Most importantly, convince one other person to look at this list and start making changes in their lifestyle. That is the biggest step of all.
This guest post comes from Steve at Brip Blap, a little blog about life, family, career, personal finance, productivity, health and the environment.
These are some great tips and I’m certainly going to try to implement most of them. This is not the first time I read to unplug stuff so I really need to get on that.
GnomeyNewt
Oct 2nd at 4:11 pm
Use a foam cup?! But aren’t we trying to get people to use less foam because they aren’t biodegradable? I thought using a cup (what about plastic cups?) would be better than using a foam cup every day?
pelf
Oct 3rd at 5:54 pm
Pelf - it depends on what your measure of waste is. As I said, the energy needed to produce a ceramic or plastic cup (fossil fuels, materials extracted, etc.) is significantly higher than a foam cup. A ceramic cup will be washed hundreds of times, wasting water, as well.
I won’t deny that foam isn’t bad, too, but there are ‘hidden’ costs to the other alternatives that people may not always consider. Personally I use ceramic cups and try not to wash it after just one use. But a foam cup, unfortunately, may use fewer natural resources if you look at the entire beginning-to-end lifestyle.
Brip Blap
Oct 3rd at 7:06 pm
Making something with water that leaves that water unusable without additionally cleaning is bad.
Washing something is not wasting water! If you wash something with water and if you have a normal water drain hopefully or if you just plain wash it out over the dirt, the earth with naturally filter it and it will go back into your well system or other system to be reused again. Washing = good!
GnomeyNewt
Oct 4th at 1:34 am
I would imagine that people usually wash their dishes/cups/etc. in water with soap, or they use a dishwasher. The detergent used in dishwashers is toxic, and even the purest natural soap for handwashing dishes makes the water unfit to be directly released back into the environment without treatment. “Wasting” was probably too strong of a word, but I there is still a cost to the environment in treating and reusing that water.
If you are taking your cups outside, rinsing them with water over dirt and not using any soap, then I concede the point: that is clearly better. I would argue, though, that this would be a TINY proportion of the total dishwashing going on in the world. Water going down the drain isn’t simply rereleased into the environment, either, because there is a lot of food waste mixed in with it, typically.
I hear your point, but there’s still a cost to washing cups that you don’t incur if you reuse a disposable cup multiple times.
Brip Blap
Oct 4th at 1:56 am
What if you only wash you cup once a day? I only rinse mine :)
Renee
Oct 4th at 11:05 pm
Wondering why glass isn’t said here? Is glass not green item? I just use these weird canning jars we found at the house we bought.
Water used to wash things, even with soap is able to get renewed naturally through the earth. By the time your soapy water reaches underground water sources it will be filtered and you can drink it again once it is pulled up from the ground. Plus they do a whole lotta other filtering these days too once they pull it up.
If you live in a city, water is probably all treated at the local treatment center. But if you are on your own septic, you have a water drain area where excess water runs into the ground. Take a look at most peoples yards or area where the septic field is and you will only see GREEN plant matter, very lush (maybe even the only green) regardless of the chemicals that are poured through that thing! I’m not sure why that is, but I can spot it on most properties, maybe it is because the chemicals are diluted? I have no idea!
Can’t say the same is true for manufacturing plastic or other toxic substances, as that stuff is just flat out toxic and properly kills the air.
@Renee: We drink mostly water so a rinse is great!
GnomeyNewt
Oct 4th at 11:45 pm