The Wanderer

Back in July, Brooke and I started consciously trying to simplify and reduce our "footprint" in the world.  One of the biggest, ugliest footprints we could think of was our power consumption.  Don't get me wrong, we didn't actively waste power before.  We drive two small Hondas.  We keep the heat at 68 and a/c at 78.  However, we could clearly do better. 

By simply replacing all our light bulbs with CFL bulbs, and by being very conscious of when we used A/C this summer, I think we've made a sizeable difference in our kilowatt hours used per month.  I was going to save this post for after I collected more comparison data, but I was so shocked by the initial results, that I couldn't wait.  See the 2006 vs 2007 (to-date) comparison chart to the left.

It's not hard to see where we started trying, and it's not hard to imagine what the rest of this year's line might look like if we keep it up.  Perhaps the most amazing thing to me is that we were able to make such a noticeable difference with almost zero impact on our "life style" and without having to give up very much.

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...

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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:

Paper including: newspaper, brown paper bags, magazines, catalogs, discarded mail, fliers, paper, cereal boxes, phone books, and office paper

Plastic bottles, jars and jugs made from #1 & 2 HDPE

Tin, steel and aluminum

Glass-all colors

Corrugated cardboard

Right now we're looking for some good stacking bins to hold all our recyclables until I take them in.  If anyone knows of a good place to get something like that, let me know.

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

We've been really enjoying the weekly challenge we've been getting at church this month about how "God is green."  Our teaching paster, Rob Bell, has been teaching a series by that name (and inviting in outsiders to discuss the same).  We've been trying to make some changes in our lives to be more green like God.  Here's a quick list--some things implemented, other still under investigation.  Who knows, maybe you'll be inspired too:

• Changing our incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescents
• More open windows, less A/C
• Signing up for a drop-off recycling program run by the county where we live
• Walking and riding our bike if we can (tough one where we live)
• Buying and eating locally produced food, primarily at the local farmers market
• We're looking into growing some of our own food
• Our next car purchase will probably be a Honda Civic Hybrid
• I'm seriously looking into vermiculture for our food waste
• We're buying more environmentally-friendly cleaning supplies and other home products
• I'm looking into our power company's green generation program where, with a 1.6 cent-per-KwH charge, all our power comes from renewable sources.  Specifically 70% wind and 30% land-fill gas.  All together, this would probably cost us an average of $15 month.
• Brooke signed us up for GreenDimes, a service that saves trees and water and reduces carbon emissions by reducing the amount of junk mail we receive...everybody wins!

I'm looking for more good ideas.  Hit me with a comment if you have any.

Sermon links (mp3):
"Serve God, Save the Planet" author Matthew Sleeth
Crackus Drivewaya Michiganus - Rob Bell
Towers and Tomatoes - Rob Bell
*UPDATE: The New Seatbelt - Rob Bell & Matt Krick

I couldn't resist the $400 TiVo Series3 deal, although I got mine from store.tivocommunity.com, the store attached to a TiVo enthusiast message board (for $399 instead of about $430 at Amazon).  As a former lifetime-subscription owner, I was bummed that TiVo discontinued their lifetime-subscription transfer deal a few months ago.  Based on several message board posts I read, I asked TiVO customer service if, under certain circumstances, they would still give out the aforementioned lifetime transfer deal.  For some reason unknown to me, that's all it took to convince them to go for it.  That means for $200 extra (on top of the $400 box), I won't ever have to pay a TiVo monthly subscription again...for years to come, I hope.

Update: I'll keep you posted on how it goes hooking things up to Comcast this weekend

I heard an interesting and somewhat shocking interview on my local NPR station.  It blew away almost everything I thought I knew about watering my lawn.  Searching for the information I heard later lead me to an article by the same research team at MSU.  Below are some of their findings on the best way to irrigate lawns.  A lot of it is against the conventional wisdom.  No doubt this is the first time science has ever disproven conventional wisdom.

Here are some interesting out-takes:

• "Generally, lawn turf requires 0.5 to 1.5 inches of water per week"
• "That corresponds to 0.1 to 0.2 inch of water [daily]"
• "Light, frequent applications of water are much more productive than heavy applications once a week."
• "The best time of day for watering is early afternoon just before the highest temperature period of the day."

Full information at the link below.  I hope you find it as useful as I did.

Full Article: http://www.turf.msu.edu/docs/turftipsE09.pdf
MSU's Irrigation Practices to Preserve Water Quality
G.T. Lyman, P.E. Rieke & J.M. Vargas Jr.
Departments of Crop and Soil Sciences and Plant Pathology, Michigan State University

Mad props to Craig Andera for his article on how to mix Windows Authentication with Forms/anonymous on an ASP.NET web site:

http://pluralsight.com/blogs/craig/archive/2004/07/24/1699.aspx

I'm using this at my job to allow our support staff to automatically login to our customer's applications if they access the application from within our coporate network.

Prittay, prittay, prittay cool!

This Wired article (non-subscribers: Wired is not one of those mags that usually writes breathlessly about flying cars and cyborgs...you're thinking of Popular Science/Mechanics) talks about an Irish company, Steorn, that claims to have stumbled onto a true "perpectual motion" machine--a machine that produces more energy than it uses.  They are currently accepting scientist volunteers to validate their claims.  Count me very skeptical but interested...

Steorn: http://www.steorn.net/frontpage/default.aspx
Video Mirror: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1784833525509845733