Green your home.
"A superefficient house can cut your bills -- and emissions -- by 66%," de Rothschild adds, and here are the areas in which he suggests we have the most potential for savings:
- Thermostat - Save 4% on bills and emissions for every 2 degrees that you lower your thermostat in the winter months
- Windows - Save 20-30% on energy use with doubled-paned windows that have "low-e" coating and weather-proof seals
- Insulation - Resist heat flow with insulation that has high "R-value" options, like blown-in cellulose, recycled denim or foams like Icynene
- Yard - Save 10-15% on heating and cooling with trees strategically planted to shade your home from the hot sun and to protect it from cold winds
- Appliances - Buy electronics, refrigerators, washers and air-conditioners with the Energy Star label
- Water heater - Save 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide every year with a blanket insulation kit for your water heater
- Bathroom - Install a composting toilet
- Floors - Replace carpet with eco-friendly flooring, like natural linoleum, cork or bamboo
- Laundry - Air-dry your clothes just six months out of the year and you'll cut your carbon emissions by 700 pounds
For more information about greening your home, check out the U.S. Green Building Council.
1 comment:
Right now we're renting our home, so we won't be making any eco-friendly changes to the windows, insulation, toilet or floors. Fortunately, we DO have two shade trees in our backyard -- a fig and a mulberry -- that go a long way toward shading the house in this scorching Arizona sun. We're buying an Energy Star printer today, but when we bought our microwave a couple of weeks ago, we found no Energy Star models available, online or at the store. Next we'll be installing a water heater blanket insulation kit. It's so cheap -- like 20 to 30 bucks -- that there's really no excuse not to, especially considering how much more you save in the long run. We're also going to try air drying at least some of our laundry. To keep them from getting stiff, we'll try a liquid softener we put in the washer (biodegradable of course). As for the thermostat, that's a stickier issue in our household. (Nothing makes sleep less enjoyable than being too hot or too cold.) We do live in Arizona, though, so the winter months are mild and we won't need heat for another month or more.
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