Besides the Prius, what do you do to reduce, reuse, recycle?

You may think the little things don't save you money, but they do. Our total energy bill (for the house, shop and detached studio) runs under $50 per month, plus about 2 cords of wood. We don't live in a cave, but just like everyone else, just more efficiently.

Not to mention, reducing your waste and energy use, (even if it doesn't save you money) is the right thing to do for your children and their children's children. Sometimes one should think beyond ones own self interest.

Icarus

 

Today...I replaced the flapper on the toilet.

It wasn't the original but a generic replacement. It was supposed to be correct for the brand of toilet, but it never worked right. I always had to hold the handle down or it would stop flushing before the job was done. Guests found this annoying as well. They would always tell me the toilet was broken or about how you have to hold the handle down. I finally had enough.

I bought three different flappers. The third one finally did the trick. I'm sure I wasted a lot of water having to hold the handle down. Now the toilet will flush correctly with the correct amount of water.

 

I have an (actual) brick sitting in the holding tank so that the holding tank fills up with less water.

 

I picked my 2008 Prius in January and the dealer filled the tank for me. I usually paid for my gas with a credit card but since then I have been on a quest. I want to see how long I can go without using my credit card for gas. Since then I have been taking back soda/beer cans for .05 each, raided my change jar, and everytime I have any one dollar bills I stash them. My neighbor drinks enourmous amounts of beer and gives me his cans. This has worked pretty well but is getting harder as gas increases. This quest may seem fanatical but it is fun. I am now eying my wifes purse...

 

Back in the 1970's (house built in mid-50's)

Insulate the attic
Insulate the walls (blown in)
Programmable thermostat (an instant 10% savings)
whole house attic fan
new storm windows

Today

CLF's where ever we can .... (also did this at church with estimated savings of over $500 per year for that building).
Did add A/C to house but: Level one cooling- 100 foot oak tree on south side of home providing shade, Level two cooling- attic fan on timer, Level three cooling A/C on hot/humid days only.
New thermal pane windows. Significant difference in winter and less outside noise.
New high efficiency natural gas furnace
Do recycle and have own cloth grocery bags
Vehicles: We do RV but rather than a below 10mpg Class A customized my own Class B that gets 16mpg. Own a 50+mpg Prius and 22mpg Equinox. Ride our bikes and if all else fails WALK. Also made it a point to live withing 30 minutes of work.

 

Of course that counts! I foster pets, too... have another one coming tomorrow. Since last year, we've had about 10 that we've fostered and that have been adopted. We ended up adopting one ourselves because she was special needs and after about 5 months of living with us and our pack, she appeared to assume like this was her new home. That, and the fact that everyone who showed interest in her declined when they learned of her special needs moved us to make her a permanent addition to our pack.

On the topic of toilets, we invested in a dual flush Caroma (Australian) toilet... wow, this is a great toilet, and even with the lowest flush has never clogged (it uses a different flush technology than standard American toilets; i.e. waste first, then water... not siphoning with water first then waste as is the American technology). I hope to change our 2nd toilet soon, too. BTW, this type of toilet has been used in some European countries for decades and I'm glad it's finally available here.

My worms are doing great too... I was worried about moving them outside in the summer heat, but as long as I pay attention to their moisture, they are fine and cool enough. I've had a chance to 'parade' them to friends and neighbors several times, and it has piqued curiosity and interest. So far, I've set up one with a small amount of worms, and next week, I'm going to set up another friend with a little worm bin. Yay!! Spreading the good word...

 

No one is forcing you to help sustain the planet for your grand children but you are completely wrong among this group to say it is dollars causing people to recycle when people are sorting their waste for no personal gain.
I'm happy to spend more money to create less polution, for example I pay a premium for "green electricity", that is electricity from wind and/or solar.

 

When we moved into our house about a over year ago I decided to be a bit more "green"

I filled water bottles and put them in all of our toilet tanks so we'd use less water there.

I switched from toilet paper to flushable wet wipes. I can buy a large pack of refills that last me months because I can usually get away with only using 2 wipes per sitting. My wife refuses to use them though

I replaced most of our bulbs with CFLs... I still have a few rarely used ones too replace and for some reason all our fans use smaller bulbs that I can't find CFL replacements for.

When landscaping I went with artificial turf and put a flower bed under the a/c condensation drain pipe. The turf still has to be sprayed down once a week because of the dog, but still uses much less water.

We stopped using bottled water now the we have a filtration system and recycle as much of our waste as we can.

Before we could afford a Prius we traded in my wife's ford escape (18-20 mpg) for a corolla s (30-35 mpg).

 

What flush volume did you get? They go as low as 4.5/3 litre flush.
You have to hand it to them Aussies, they know their Sh#* and how to get rid of it.
Now tell everyone which way the water really swirls in an Australian toilet. I never understood how a toilet can swirl.
BTW, Caroma is an Adelaide South Australian company!!

This is my favourite Caroma water saving product

South Australia is the driest state in the driest continent on earth.

 

For you or anyone else looking for GOOD selection of CFLs, try here:http://www.nolico.com/saveenergy/

Icarus

 

Me too. All of our toilets' tanks have bricks or large rocks in them to displace water.

 

We try to practice the old motto in regards to flushing the toliet, "if its wet let it set, if its brown flush it down".

We do separate our garbage and participate in the recyling program, all plastics, cans, paper, etc.. all get put into another bin and the city disposal picks that up every 2 weeks.

We have also just begun with moving to more eco-friendly household cleaning products.

All of our light bulbs are the new energy efficient ones that last for 5+ years, we got rid of the old filament type bulbs.

We do not buy the water bottles but bought a water cooler system and just take the 5 gallon jugs to the store and refill them for $1.30 for a 5 gallon. This is also a money saver as well as saving the plastic bottles.

We do shop at Trader Joes and Health food stores for much of our food. We buy as much organically grown food as possible.

 

LOL. Hadn't heard that one.

We day: "If it's yellow it's mellow, if it's brown it's down."

 

That toilet you got pictured there is what I really wanted to get, but I couldn't find that anywhere here in the U.S. (or at least not at a distributor near where I am)... that is one smart toilet!!

Hmm.. . I just checked and I thought we got the 4.5/3 but now that I'm checking more closely, it might be the 6/3. Still, it's a savings over the U.S. toilet. It's the Caravelle, Easy Height one-piece, and it looks great in our remodeled bathroom.

Do you have the above toilet? And is it as practical as it looks?

 

1. Using CFLs almost exclusively
2. Buying carbon-free electricity. (Just 2cents/kwh over regular price)
3. Supplementing A/C with space heaters, fan.
4. Generally being cheap, you know, Brita instead of bottled water, packed lunch rather than buying, etc.

I don't really have to take any effort for any of these. And apart from electricity others provide financial and some other benefits evean apart from environmental benefits.

 

As somebody from India, I can tell you that the "sacred" part is mostly media hype. Sure there are those who worship a cow. But it's as common as, may be an amish village in US.
Sadly the environmental awareness there is only in its infancy. Consumerism has mainly bloomed in India for a little over a decade. I think it will be sometime before people start realizing the effects of their actions.

 

Many of the ideas already listed (and thank you for the new ones).
I also eat less beef (most energy intensive meat).
Never leave cell phone chargers plugged in.
Most batteries we use are rechargeable.
Typically use the laptop instead of the desktop computer as it uses only a fraction of the power.
Lights are all either CFLs or LEDs.
Solar PV system as well as geothermal heat pump.

 

Thanks for that little insight. It's one of the reasons that spending time on PriusChat is more educational than watching any news.

 

Along with using less gasoline, the easiest and most effective thing one can do to reduce CO2 emissions is to buy 100% wind electricity from our utilities. In the US on average one kiloWatt-hour of electricity creates about one pound of CO2 (the exact amount of course varies by geography and power company). Switching to 100% wind power can easily eliminate as much CO2 as is created by driving a Prius. It costs a little more but it's worth it, kinda like a Prius.

(For example, last year our house used 10,000 kW-hrs for which we paid about $1500. All of that was wind power, so we avoided creating roughly 10,000 lbs of CO2. In that same year I drove my Prius 8000 miles, which created about 3500 lbs of CO2.)

 

But are there not cows wandering the streets of every large city? Why are they tolerated? There are very few places one can see Amish.