This is a guest post from Kevin Bumgardner.
Some easy energy-saving habits can help reduce carbon emissions. When you stick with these habits and use energy-saving services, appliances and optimal energy providers, you will increase your efficiency and save money.
You — and the earth — are going to reap the benefits. When you become a good role model to your kids by making simple earth-friendly habits normal, you not only help them but pave the way for an environmentally responsible future generation.
Image by mattwalker69/Flickr
Turn Off Your Lights
This is one of the most common (and easy) energy-saving habits. It takes several weeks to fully form a habit, so the more you are reminded to turn off the lights, the more likely you will do so on a consistent basis. Your lights might not draw a lot of power individually, but when you leave your entire house lit up for hours on end, it all adds up. Happy Living Magazine reports that you could save up to 20 percent of your household electricity usage just by doing this.
Line Dry Your Clothes
It might seem old-fashioned to hang your clothes out to dry, but your dryer consumes a great deal of energy and puts out plenty of heat. If you can dry even a load or two on a clothesline, you are establishing a good habit to avoid the power-sucking dryer.
Use Off-Peak Hours
Your energy pricing fluctuates based on its demand throughout the day. If you use appliances during off-peak hours, you’re not going to be paying as much on your JustEnergy.com bill. Electric companies offer various energy plans to fit your particular needs. A stay-at-home mom will have different electricity needs than a single person who goes to the office from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. every weekday.
Maintain Temperature Limits
Adjust your thermostat during the winter, so that it’s as cold as you can stand it and still be comfortable. In the summer, find out what point has you sweating through shirts. You don’t need a drastic change in your thermostat. Even a one-degree change can make a significant difference. Get an energy audit from your electric company to find out if your house is leaking valuable energy through cracks and holes in the structure.
Unplug
Many devices continue to draw a trickle of energy—even when they aren’t switched on—as long as they are still connected to a live outlet. Use power strips to easily unplug many devices at once, or remember to check every appliance and electronic so you don’t miss an item.
Sleep and Hibernate
Computers have two different methods of entering into an idle state that does not completely shut down the computer. Sleep is a mode where the computer halts services, programs are loaded into memory and you get full functionality back several seconds after you restore your session. Hibernate actually saves everything that’s open on the computer right to the hard disk. It then shuts down the computer so it’s effectively getting a zero power draw, as opposed to the low power used by sleep.
About the Author: Kevin Bumgardner has been in landscaping for 20 years with a large background in gardening and farming.
This post is featured at Tuned-In Tuesday.
