How can my family go green?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Amy B
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Amy B

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Really going green has been something I have wanted to for a long time. The thing is, I can never find easy ways other than turing off lights to do thing. Our family is a family of four, with only two that can drive. We also have a dog. No one needs diapers, both of the kids are over 5. We carpool to everything we can, I just don't know what else to do!

Please can you help. I really need some ideas. Preferably things that we don't have to buy. Thank you all so much!
 
Replace your light bulbs with the new kind that look like corkscrews.

Put your water heater on 'vacation mode' if you're away for awhile.

Considering adding insulation to ceiling and windows. I know you said "preferably .. not buy" but some of these can have short "pay back times" since heating and A/C are so expensive.

Some ranch style homes lend themselves to partitioned heat control; that is, you don't try to heat the whole house all the time. You block off parts of it and use space heaters where the people are. That might be tough with youngsters.

Talk to your local power company about an "energy audit". Ours tries to identify old appliances which can be replaced with much more efficient models. Our supplier will buy the less efficient units if you'll buy a modern one. As with insulation, don't do everything at once; wait til the pay back time on one change has paid off before embarking on the next.

Look for electric gadgets which take a little power even when they're nominally "off". Consider putting them on a power strip where you can really control their power.

IF you have two cars, you might consider exchanging one for an electric. I bought an electric truck (conversion) recently for $14000 but its 40-50 mile range isn't good for driving to distant cities (so you'd still need one gas car). But, with help from a sympathetic energy company, the operating cost of the electric can be 3 cents per mile or less. My electric is slow on the freeway.

I looked into solar panels and decided they weren't an efficient use of money.
 
energy efficient light bulbs
turning heating off and wearing a jumper
bikes instead of cars
x
 
energy efficient light bulbs
turning heating off and wearing a jumper
bikes instead of cars
x
 
get a compost in your back yard..that'll take care of alot of garbage- assuming your not buying fruit and veggies packaged up and wraiped in plastic,
thats one thing
use vingar for cleaing thats better.. just add a drip of an essential oil to it for smell.( but no oil if ur cleaing mirrors)
stuff like that

sites?

home made cleaners
http://web1.msue.msu.edu/imp/mod02/01500631.html
http://www.naturodoc.com/library/lifestyle/cleaner.htm

guide site
http://www.greenhomeguide.org/
 
To save energy, don't leave cell phones and laptops charging once they are already charged. Turn off the power on surge protectors for computers if you can (if it doesn't mess up the internet connection).
Hang up clothes on a clothesline or on drying racks in the winter instead of putting them in the dryer. This is a bit of a pain, but it saves a lot of energy. Drying racks are pretty cheap.
Recycle everything you can. You can recycle plastic bags at grocery stores like stop and shop.
Start a compost pile. This pretty much eliminated all of our trash, now we just have a grocery bag full every week which we put in our neighbor's bin. Compost is also good because you don't have to buy fertilizers which could be harmful to the environment. There's lots of information online about how to start a compost bin and what to put in it.
Don't use pesticides on your lawn. Don't water your lawn too much or only water it in the afternoon so that the water doesn't evaporate before it gets to the roots.
Try to use cloth tote bags instead of plastic shopping bags or just reuse plastic shopping bags. Bring drinks from home in reusable containers instead of buying bottles from a vending machine. Don't reuse plastic bottles, though, because they leech chemicals into the water after a while.
Reduce the amount of meat you eat or become vegetarian! It takes a lot more resources to raise an animal for slaughter than to harvest plants for the same amount of food. To raise an animal, you have to harvest plants for the animal to eat, transport the food to the factory farm, feed the animal for years, then transport the meat to you. To eat plants, you only have to transport plants directly to you. Also, 90% of the energy of food is lost as you move up each step of the energy pyramid: http://www.eduweb.com/portfolio/earthsystems/food/images/energy_pyramid.gif
Vegetarian diets are healthier, too, and you're not killing animals unnecessarily.
This is what my family did. I hope you can do some of these things! Sorry for the rant about vegetarianism. :D
 
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