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| Pepper Rama Gourmet, Gifts & Hot Sauce |
Easy Ways to Be Green or How You Can BE a Hero and Save Humanity The Earth will survive no question, the real issue is will Humanity ? What Can You Do?
Change out incandescent light bulbs to highly efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) They last about ten years and save you hundreds of dollars in energy costs per year. You can help prevent more than 13 billion pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere —which is like taking more than a million cars off the road for an entire year! 2. Use a Clothesline Did you know that electric/gas dryer is the 3rd highest consumer of energy in your home? Use a clothesline to dry clothes instead of an electric or gas dryer. Use a clothes horse to dry clothes inside during inclement weather or for delicates like underwear. Use liquid fabric softener if you have hard water so towels and such won't be stiff. Just one average household can save 1200 lbs of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere every year. You'll also reduce your utility bill by several hundred dollars every year. 3. No More Plastic Bags! BYOB - Bring Your Own Bag! Shopping We now know that plastic never fully degrades and remains in the environment, entering and contaminating our food and water supply. Also, keep in mind that plastics are a petroleum based product - a resource that for so many, many reasons both environmental and political - we should be trying to consume far, far, less of. According to one source, each year the world makes about 5 trillion plastic bags using about 20 billion barrels of oil, each bag able to last thousands of years. Bring re-usable shopping bags - made of canvas or those collapsible net bags like you see all over Europe. Some stores are now offering to pay consumers a small fee to encourage them to BYOB. Re-use cardboard boxes and re-cycle them when they finally become to worn to be of use. Stores spend allot of money of plastic bags and that cost gets passed on to the consumer. Reduce the cost of business and reduce the price of consumer goods. 4. Replace older appliances with Newer More Energy Efficient Models Refrigerators, dishwashers, hot water heaters, ovens, stoves, microwaves, etc. When it comes time to replace your appliances, do the research and review the Energy Labels. You'll save hundreds of dollars in utility bills, reduce CO2 emissions and have a better more efficient product. Many refrigerators are now using LED lighting instead of incandescent bulbs too. Many utility companies offer refunds of several hundred dollars for buying and installing Energy Star rated appliance models. Check on this with your local utility company before you buy. Also, maximize fridge efficiency by keeping the fridge at 37°F. and the freezer at 0°F. 5. Tune Up that Car! Keeping the maintenance up to date on your vehicle makes it more energy efficient. So change the oil, tune up the engine and keep the tires properly inflated. When it's time to replace your car, buy the most energy efficient model possible - like a hybird. 6. Drive Less Plan your trips - it's easier than you think. Plan your grocery shopping for 2 x's per month instead of 4 - if you forget something, try to get it while you're on the road anyway - like going to or from work - instead of making a special trip. Almost every car has a re-settable mileage counter above the regular one. Use it to track how many miles you normally drive every week and try to reduce that number by planning your trips. Take the savings you'll gain from gas expense and do something special with it or put it in a savings account for a rainy day! 7. Turn It Down! Did you know that 50% of household energy cost is for heating and cooling your home? AC units also inject additional carbon into the atmosphere too. What can you do? Tune up your system, replace your filters and use a programmable thermostat to control the temperature throughout the day. Set the temp a litter higher in the summer and a little cooler in the winter. The savings will be big and you'll hardly notice the difference. 8. Hot Water Heaters Turn off the hot water hear or set it at vacation during the day when you are not home. Turn it on 30 min before you take a shower and back off when your done. Use a programmable timer, insulate the water pipes, install a insulation bag around your hot water heater (check with manufacturer instruction first - some units can't have the insulation bag installed). Install a newer more energy efficient model. Don't forget to look into the utility rebate before buying - it could be worth several hundred dollars! 9. Washers Use cold water to wash clothes whenever possible. Instead of hot water try using warm water. The clothes will be just as clean and you'll cut energy use by 50 percent. 10. On Stand-by Look around your house and take stock of the TV's, DVD players, Computers, Phone, Cable, etc. and you may find that many of these modern day electronics are NOT really turned off - even though you know you turned them off and they look off - but the truth is that they maybe on what is called "Stand-By". This means they are still using energy while waiting for you to resume your use of them. Unplug them or turn them off at the wall. 11. Bike or Walk Bicycle or walk instead of driving. Carpool, use the bus system for longer trips. 12. Filter H2O Instead of buying bottled water for home, install a water filter. 13. Reduce, Re-use, Recycle Look for products with the least amount of packaging, re-use products (FYI. those horrible plastic grocery bags - avg use is 12 seconds before being discarded but they last in the environment over 1,000 years), recycle what you can't reuse. 14. Coffeemaker Instead of using paper filters, use a re-usable filter. Not only will you save trees that help reduce CO2 but you'll also save money on buying replacement filters. 15. Veggie Truth is that, in terms of energy, it simply costs less to raise produce than to raise animals. It's also healthier and more humane. There are many ways to go meatless and even if you only go meatless 1 day per week you will make a huge impact on the environment and on your health. 16. Junk Mail Go to dmaconsumers.org and get off the junk mail list. You should see a reduction in about 3 months. Change is difficult for humans, on average it takes 6 mos for change to be incorporated into daily habit. But humans are adaptable and we can change. Everyone talks about saving the Earth - but the Earth will recover and will be here long after we are gone. The real issue is humanity - we are the ones we are trying to save. Scientists have been warning us for some time that our activities are going to wipe us out. We know now that we have accelerated that time line to possibly be within ours and our children's lifetime. Even if you think that all is lost ,we owe it to our children to have at least tried. Even if you incorporate just some of the above changes, you are helping to make the environment we depend on for life, a better place. Here at Pepper Rama we are incorporating the above changes into our business and personal lives. We are changing out the lights, getting rid of plastic bags and much more. We will continue to look at how we can make changes to become better stewards of our environment. We hope that you will consider this an opportunity also to make changes. Food for Thought......... As of July 2007 the World Population is 6.5 billion people (6,602,224,175 ) USA Population is 300 million people (301,139,947) In 1840 there were only 15 million in the US and World Population was only 1 Billion people.
ways to reduce, re-use, recycle |