The Wanderer

We've now converted every incandescent light bulb we could (around 40-50 of 'em) to a compact fluorescent (CFL).  Since incandescent bulbs are only about 2% efficient and CFLs are around 8%, it seems like a no-brainer.  CFLs also last about 8 to 15 times as long as the incandescent cousins.  After buying and trying a few different brands (and reading some reviews online) we picked up a whole slew of N:Vision bulbs at our local Home Depot.  I've read that lighting accounts for 9% of the energy in a typical home.  If CFLs use about 20% what a comparable incandescent uses, I figure I could reduce by energy usage by ~7%.  We'll see if reality reflects my math.

I got some great feedback on my God is green, why aren't we? post from last week.  Brooke and I are serious about making changes to reduce our impact on the earth.  In the past, it felt like there was nothing an average joe like me could do, now there are so many good things to do, we're overwhelmed.

Our solution is to break the problem up.  We're going to tackle one new solution per week for a while until the list is gone.  We know things will reach a point where the one-a-week rate is too quick for us to keep it up, and the process will probably take us years if not the rest of our lives.  It's a journey, and one that we're excited about joining.  As a result, I'll be posting here about what what we're currently up to.  And now the first of many posts...

This week's focus is recycling.  We signed up for the Ottawa County Health Department's recycling program.  They give you a yearly membership for $40 which includes a card giving us access to all three recycling centers around the county.  In addition to the free-of-charge program for hazardous waste, they accept:

You know it and you love it for searching the web, but have you tried using Google as a crib sheet?

• 60 miles per hour in kilometers per hour
• 1 gallon in teaspoons
• 500 megabytes over 1.5 megabit per second
• 200 gallons in hogsheads