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

Low flow shower heads are another cheap and easy thing. Save water and the energy needed to heat the water. Don't forget CFLs. You ought to try a few and if you like 'em, buy more. Get the stainless steel water bottles, plastic in your water isn't a good thing. They're not cheap, but the water tastes a lot better out of them than plastic bottles.

 

We got a rain barrel and started harvesting rain water to water our plants. We also do the reusable grocery bags and as added bonus to doing that both Sunflower market and Albertson's give you a discount. Although they are always annoyed because the bags we use are from Trader Joe's.

Replaced all our lights to cfls and we got a programable thermostat to use less energy while we are got (can't turn it off because of our animals)

And the Prius of course.

Ohh and we compost, but we live in the desert and often the javelina come down, knock over the barrel and eat everything inside.

 

Last year I stepped up the blue bin recycling since our city has greatly expanded what they will take.

This year I got a Wormtopia. I fed the little fellas some bread and lettuce today. They seem very happy.

I'm not even brown bagging. I have a refrigerator, microwave and toaster oven in the workroom of our library. So I make my sandwiches on site using real plates and utensils which we wash in the sink. Thus, no tin foil, plastic wrap, ziploc bags or whatever.

 

Those Javelinas are a bugger. I used to live up at Oracle and McGee and they were a real nuisance. The little ones are cute though. I think I'll have to look into a rain barrel this year.

 

Today I bought my first lawn mower: a 20" reel mower. No noise, no stink, no gas to fill, no oil to check, no driveshaft to bend on a root or rock, not even a cord to drag around behind me. And it was less expensive than just about any mower of comparable cut width. And then there's the fringe benefit: exercise! It should work out great as long as I don't let the growth get out of control.

I'll be damned if I'm going to offset my low automobile emissions with high groundskeeping emissions.

 

They are indeed pesky. We have one that likes to hang out by our home and drive our dogs nuts.

I used to live up in Oro Valley too. Went to CDO. We have since moved out the the Tucson Mountain Area.

 

Is that on the western side of Town? It's been a long time, we moved away in early 2000. I lived there for 3.5 years and loved it.

 

I have a bucket that I use to capture water while waiting for the hot water to come to the shower

Then depending on what color the toilet is, I use the gravity action of the water in the bucket to flush the toilet.

 

CDO's at Calle Concordia & Oracle (north of McGee). We live at Lambert & La Canada. Besides the Prius; we've cut down on the bottled water (use a Brita), started using the reusable shopping bags (Frye's give a 5 cent per bag discount too!), solar heater on the pool. Replaced all the light bulbs with CFLs. Looking hard at a netback solar array.
Oh yeah, started migrating all the xmas lights to LEDs!

 

Too funny, quite a few folks from the old pueblo on this thread. Try out a low flow shower head. They're a bit different to the typical 2.5 gal/min heads but they save you 40% in water use and also the energy to heat that water. You can buy one at Home Depot for like $12 so they're worth a try. Esp in the desert, where water ought to be at a premium.

The supermarkets here in Denver seems to be advertising their own reusable shopping bags, which is excellent. Many of them also give you the nickel discount per bag, so the ROI is pretty good (for all of the penny pinchers out there).

 

We use the reusable shopping bags. They are from Wegmans but we use them at other stores and no clerks have ever commented on it. Some stores give a 3 cent discount for using reusable bags.

We recycle a lot: empty toilet paper rolls, empty cereal boxes (minus the bag), junk mail, newspapers, etc. We also switched to cloth napkins (actually they're dishcloths) instead of paper, use a reusable coffee filter, recycle coffee grounds for the landscaping, and have a high efficiency washing machine, to name a few.

And we just bought a Prius! I'm sure we could do more and are working toward that.

 

Little by little, over the last decade it's grown into a lifestyle.
- When I was working I'd try to commute more miles by bicycle than by car, which became a struggle over a 25-mile round trip through 450 feet of altitude. I haven't had my bike on the road in months but our kid bicycles almost daily (weather permitting) to school.
- Oahu is piloting a dedicated curbside recycling/green waste program and taking it island-wide. We recycle about 30 gallons biweekly of cardboard/glass/plastic. We put out nearly 200 gallons of green waste biweekly in three cans, which we eventually pick up as free mulch and spread everywhere to cut down on watering/weeding.
- Our trash for a family of three is down to less than a 13-gallon bag a week, which could probably be better if we shredded/composted our paper waste. Our trash is mostly burned by HPOWER, which (with everyone else's trash) generates about 5% of Oahu's electricity.
- Every plastic bag in the house gets re-used at least once for food storage. We don't bother rinsing/drying them, just once or twice and then in the trash (which is then burned for electricity). If we need more bags (usually not a problem) then we pick them up from Wal-Mart's recycling bag drop.
- We use paper grocery bags for months (the grocery store will bag our groceries in them). Some are several years old. The really gnarly ones are carried around for weeding and end up in the green waste for mulching. We'll eventually be out of the paper-bag business because just about every trade show hands out a plastic/canvas sack for your free stuff. Over the years we've built up a supply that will replace our paper bags.
- Vermiposting, including:http://www.amazon.com/dp/product/0942256107?tag=priuschatcom-20 the last 15 months we've stepped up to the big can:
Waikiki Worm Co.: Can-O-Worms
- Composting everything that the worms don't care for, like citrus rinds and papaya seeds.
- We grow a surprising amount of our own fruit-- lemons, tangerines, mango, banana, and lychee. What we can't use we donate.
- We use solar water heating and a 3300-watt grid-tied photovoltaic array. We're producing about 275 KWHr/month. Our electric bills have consistently been under $40/month for the last year and last month's was under $20. Among tax credits, used/blemished panels from eBay/Craigslist, and doing most of our own work we'll pay back the investment in 2010 and pay back the opportunity cost in 2020.
- We've overhauled the house's electrical appliances. We're almost 100% CFLs and any lagging incandescents will go CFL when they burn out. (We're keeping an eye on LEDs for the next lighting renovation in 5-10 years.) Our fridge, dishwasher, and washing machine are EnergyStar rated. We rarely use the oven in favor of a convection microwave.
- We have six ceiling fans (no A/C) and 19-year-old windows. We've replaced the living room ceiling fan with an expensive EnergyStar model that's already paid for itself and we'll probably do the master bedroom fans next. As we renovate we'll replace the sliding/casement windows with jalousie models that let more air through, and we'll tint the south/east ones to cut down the heat load.
- We've added radiant foil insulation to our attics, south walls, and the back of our west-facing garage door-- huge improvement. When we replace the roof (renovations) we're going to add more radiant foil & foam insulation.
- A student at last year's high-school science fair put wind-monitoring equipment up on the high school's roof (it's at the highest elevation in the neighborhood). She was able to analyze the data to show that we're not a good wind-power neighborhood.
- We use Oxygenics shower heads-- best ones I've ever had and hypthetically non-clogging. Oxygenics®- Super Charge Your Shower It's expensive but I'm hoping its design will outlast two or three cheaper shower heads.
- Boiling water is easier/faster with a solar water heater. It's not an intuitive habit, but we run a gallon of water in the kitchen sink (which is saved to water the plants) and then the 140-degree water goes on the stove for the final 72 degrees. We even cook pasta in the convection microwave.
- Spouse refuses to use a clothesline but our front-loading washer spins the clothes almost dry. We get away with a drying rack for a lot of the rest and only run the (electric) dryer 3-4 times a week. When our teen leaves the house that'll drop to 1-2 times/week.
- We've been gradually cutting down on watering the yard. We've planted yellow oleanders on the back slope, which are crowding out the ugly haole koa [-]weeds[/-] trees and gradually crowding out the grass. The oleanders don't need any irrigation and they seem to control erosion just as well as the grass. As the oleanders work their way uphill I've been shutting off sprinklers and we'll eventually xeriscape the nooks & crannies with a native drought-tolerant plant like `akulikuli (~pickleweed/iceplant). This should also cut down on a lot of pruning (especially bougainvillea & mango). I think it'll be fully established in about five years.
- The upper part of the yard is getting a lot less grass, a lot more mulch, and a lot more ground cover. Spouse is getting tired of having to mow/weedwhack the grass two or three times a year...
- Spouse refuses to buy a new LCD/plasma TV ("pearls before swine"). She gets at least five years out of a CRT model and replaces them from Craigslist.
- We no longer buy a daily newspaper (although we get 3x/week free newspapers in the mail). We've hit the do not mail list pretty hard and only get a dozen pieces of mail a week.
- Re-using the other side of printer paper. Most of the mail becomes scrap printer paper.
- We've cut way down on snail mail with e-mail and electronic bill-paying. I re-use what envelopes we get in the mail and I haven't bought business-size envelopes since the 1980s.
- Hawaii has a recycling law for aluminum/glass containers. We pay six cents extra at the store and can get a nickel for returning them, which pays our kid about $75/year. Most of that comes from picking up containers during walks or at social events.
- We've enjoyed watching Ed Begley's show. His testosterone-poisoned competitive feud with Bill Nye (The Science Guy) is like watching two geeks in a face-slapping contest but the results are saving a lot of money.
- One day we'll convert the Prius to a plug-in. Of course any serious use would probably need another photovoltaic array and a second grid-tied inverter. Someday I'm hoping to erect a cheap house-shading PV pergola from these guys: Solar Suspension Systems

 

I too use canvas bags and enjoy the "deer in the headlight" look when I pass them to the cashier. I even watched one cashier put my bags on the rack but continue to use plastic (until I reminded her what the bags were for).

We take batteries and chemicals to a special dump.

We donate old cell phones to soldiers.

We donate anything useable (must be in good or excellent condition). Unfortunately, the childs torn clothing and worn shoes get dumped (same for all underwear). Catalog and photograph everything and the use TurboTax It's deductible for next year.

Most of my work clothes are taken out of the wash and hung. Less wrinkles. Tend to buy clothes that don't need drying or dry cleaning.

Now, if only we could get the kid to turn off lights/tvs, etc when he's not using them (sometimes he has 2-3 tvs on throughout the house).

Changed driving habits when I bought the Prius. I'm even trying to plan shopping trips, etc.

Since we are in drought season, we only water (with irrigation system) 20 minutes each zone 1 X per week (of course the grass is browning).

 

The Freecycle Networkâ„¢ is an online community made up of 4,490 groups with 5,246,000 members across the globe. It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It's all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Each local group is moderated by a local volunteer. Membership is free.

 

1. I compost.
2. After washing my toddler in the bath, I use the water with buckets to flush my toilets, and carry them downstairs to water my trees and grass.
3. I use a hand powered mower and grasscycle.
4. Use solar panels.

 

I purchase recycled paper products - paper towels, tp & napkins. Almost every week my recycling bin has more in it than the trash bin.

At work I make double-sided copies.

 

Never drive faster than 50mph no matter who is behind me. Bumper sticker says Saving your gas and mine. I never buy new when used will do, never buy the latest gadgets, and ignore all commercials for the good life.

 

Here in Ireland a special tax(12 cent now 24 cent per bag) was introduced on plastic bags, use dropped by 94%

By 'bagging it,' Ireland rids itself of a plastic nuisance - International Herald Tribune


I wish there was a tax on plastic bottles now

 

What I do with people like this is accelerate really hard up behind them, brake hard and then open a gap and repeat over and over again.
My sticker says ;
"Wasting gas for the rude driver in front"
I suggest you take the bus if you aren't in any hurry. That is far more eco-friendly.