Green Eyeshadow, and some Green Thoughts for the Day. April 28, 2008
Posted by Miss K in Uncategorized.trackback
Some earthy greens for a day where I had a lot of green thoughts.
Divine Intervention, Palmetto, Blast, Loden
I finally took one of those “what is your carbon footprint” tests online… where it gives you a basic idea of just how much you’re contributing to climactic change, global warming, carbon emissions… whatever name you want to call it! And I feel like I’ve got a big foot right now.
A few months ago I was so concerned with researching hybrid cars, I thought that driving and travel was the biggest problem. Well, all of the hybrid cars were too tiny for my family and use needs, or they were giant SUV’s. What’s the deal with that? Boy, was I wrong that my car was the main problem!!! My previous car was far more efficient than ANY hybrid SUV, and my “new” car gets the same mileage and has a low smog index- .39 ( the average car is .58 ) (I recently replaced it with a 3 year old “previously enjoyed” (i.e. recycled) station wagon which I am loving- you should see how much cardboard and recyclables we can fit in the back for our twice weekly trips to the town dump!!! Yes, no recycling program here. You want to recycle? You do it yourself.) The carbon footprint of my car, with the very low mileage I drive each year was nothing compared to the carbon footprint of my home!!!
I never suspected the amount of carbon emissions that we all are adding to the atmosphere just by everyday energy use in our homes! It has been a huge wakeup call for our household, and we’ve gotten out several year’s of electric bills to chart our kilowatt usage, see which months are historically the worst, and visited our electrical coop’s website for ideas on how to reduce our electrical usage and be more efficient.
We have big goals for our household. For me, it’s not even so much the monthly cost of electricity, but rather our kilowatt usage and the impact that it is having on the environment. The psychological factor of knowing that you’re making a difference, albeit a small one- is impactful.
Check your electric bill and see if your electrical company has a website. Check it out and see if you can find tips on how to be more efficient, more green, and reduce your electrical useage!
While I was at my electrical co-op’s website, Palmetto Electric Co-op, I found out a few cool things. Our co-op has an initiative to get all households to switch over to CFL bulbs and is sending two bulbs to every household. We also have a Green power plant that is run by methane gases collected from landfills (here in South Carolina)! Co-op members can sign up online to purchase $3, $6 or $9 blocks of Green Power. Of course, I just signed up. Purchasing 2 blocks per month has the same environmental impact as recycling 320 pounds of aluminum. I signed up for 3 blocks. That’s a lot of cans!!!
I’ve been listening for months to the Democratic debates and reading all of the daily political news about what each candidate is going to do for the environment, and green-collar jobs, and renewable resources… It was kind of nice to see it in action at home here in South Carolina, and be able to be a small part of it- even if I do have to pay in to it to use it.
Maybe someday power from renewable sources will be commonplace. It has to be!
Does your electric company have something similar!? Go check it out! Sign up!
Those ladies, are my green thoughts for the day…
xoxo,
Miss K
Hey Miss K ~
Just poppin’ in to say I LOVE, LOVE , LOVE your blog, especially the green thoughts you’ve been posting lately.
Keep it up!
Thanks Julie! I feel compelled most of the time to write just about makeup, but sometimes I feel it is important to write about other things on my mind. My blog gets so many hits a day that I feel like it does give me a chance to make a small difference if someone reads what I write or agrees with it and does the same thing.
Sometimes there are just bigger issues on my mind than makeup (well, alright- most of the time there are! LOL!) I just don’t write about them because I don’t want to bore all of you to death with my political, religious, sociological and environmental babblings!
So I just let a little bit through when appropriate…
Thanks for reading!
Great post, Kristen! And thanks for the link to the footprint measure. It was very eye opening for me, too - our total carbon footprint is 6.5 tonnes - almost half that of industrialized nations, and 50% higher than the worldwide average. So I feel very good about it. 2/3 of that was our car, even though we don’t drive very much annually (less than 11,000 miles total), and it’s a newer model and fairly fuel efficient (about 30mpg on highway, 26 in town, according to our estimates). I’m going to definitely look at our electrical co-op (which last year actually rebated all customers because their profits were higher than they needed - can you believe it?) and see where I can economize. We wash laundry on cold, come summer I try to hang dry as much as possible, we have nearly all compact fluroescent bulbs in our home and our shops. I want to start recyling, but like I mentioned in another post, the recyling center is 40 miles away, and they don’t take all that much. But it is heartbreak to throw away cans and glass, for sure. GREAT blog posts, girlie - I really appreciate them!
Bridget, we’re doing a lot of things, mainly in home- our carbon footprint was 8.5 tonnes! Most of it was our home, which is very inefficient. I’ve gone to Touchstone Energy Cooperatives https://touchstoneenergy.cooperative.com for help…
We’ve got CFL’s in all major lights and have cracked down on lights being left on when not necessary.
Any computer gets put to sleep. No screen savers.
Wash is done on cold, larger loads. I air dry all of my clothes, other clothes dry on permapress cycle- the cool down period uses the residual heat of the dryer to complete the drying cycle.
Doing full loads in a dishwasher is more efficient than hand washing dishes. Load that dishwasher as efficiently as possible!
We’ve turned the thermostat down on our water heater 3 degrees.
Kids get “power showers”… short showers that we supervise to make sure they aren’t wasting water.
We’re taking shorter showers, turning faucets off when we brush our teeth or wash hands.
We’ve reworked our ventilation in our house to make sure that our heat pump is not being overworked. We used to have tons of ducts closed. We’ve opened them all up.
We’re changing the air filters in our heat pump with high quality allergen reducing filters every 2 months.
I’m going to have our heat pump and air system checked for regular maintenance to make sure it is running efficiently.
We’re recycling all bottles, cans, glass, paper, magazines, plastic and cardboard for both home and office and we take these to the dump twice a week.
I am going to have a contractor come in and check our ductwork and vents for leaks and breaks (our house is 20 years old)… and also other places where heat and cool air are escaping… around doors, attic door, etc.
So these are some of the things that we are doing… and we are seeing it as a household challenge of sorts. I’ve got our years of killowatt useage mapped out in an excel file for the last 4 years by month and year, so our goal is to see how much we can reduce it by making these active changes!
I am excited to see how we do each month! Of course, if it were just me here, I’d be all-out survival style, hanging laundry everywhere, burning candles, etc… LOL!
I’ll report back on how our family does when the electric bill comes! Our next bill period is for 4/2-5/2, so it won’t make too much difference for that bill… but for 5/2-6/2, that’s the one I’ll be really looking at!
Good luck everyone and seriously, call your electrical companies and visit their websites… see if there are any Green Power initiatives. We can all be a little part of a big difference.
Thanks for letting me use my blog to babble!
I run a full dishwasher (Bosch - a tad more expensive than your average brand, but uses far less water, and great on energy) after 8pm when the electric rates drop. And only full loads for my Bosch washing machine as well.
Nearly warm enough to get my composter up & running again - can’t just have a pile due to bears, this one’s completely enclosed.
As far as the car goes - I often get comments on my Landcruiser - I just can’t justify spending $40K (or more) on a more fuel efficient vehicle when I drive less than 5K miles a year. I’d rather continue to drive my 14 year old car - it’s less on my insurance, I don’t care if someone dents it, hubby can fix it since it’s not run by a computer, and it’s not sitting in a junkyard waiting to be crushed. I intend to get another 10 years out of it.
There are so many little things we can all do that will make a much greater impact.
Saw this on our local news and thought of your post.
“”The Prius Effect.” His theory is: drivers who are given constant feedback on their gas mileage, like owners of the popular Toyota Prius hybrid, will naturally try and improve that number.
“That was the genesis of the whole project. We thought, ‘Oh my gosh, if we can provide that feedback loop, then we all don’t have to be driving a Prius,’” he said.”
FULL STORY
http://www.9news.com/seenon9news/article.aspx?storyid=93636&catid=509