We also recycle paper and plastic/aluminum and donate alot of stuff to the Hospice store. I run a fan instead of turning down the temp on the A/C. Fortunately, the walls in this condo are very well insulated, so energy bills are low, especially considering it's all electric (heat pump). We both drive very little, since we take the subway to work, and walk lots of places. So the cars are pretty much just for errands, visiting the 'rents or the occasional trip out of town. I've not converted to those CF bulbs yet.

 

Now that's just wrong! No need for that! Take that car out!

 

I have doing mostly green way before it became a buzzword. I do water the lawn (we have Lake Erie, you don't)and I use chemicals on my lawn but I do keep them to a minimum. I can't remember when we didn't recycle. I grew up with composting. I had CFL long before people knew what they were. I keep the temperature down in the house (via a set-back thermostat) for what seems like decades. I did this because I'm slightly cheap.

 

We replaced our ancient central heat/air (gas/electric) with as high efficiency a unit as we could afford. We use fluorescents where we can. I drive an S and my younger son drives a CRX HF. Talk about a small carbon footprint. I think he exhales more CO2 while driving than the tail pipe does.

 

Investing in a wind generator, not so much for any "green" issue, but to keep some green in my pockets.

 

I never water my lawn either. I do occasionally use weed chemicals.

Not watering or fertilizing the lawn also means I don't have to mow it very often. So what if it is brown in the summer? That's what grass does, it gets brown in the summer.

 

I'm going to do that this summer. In the meantime, my heat is off completely. My old furnace started setting off my CO detector, so I shut it off. I figured spring isn't usually all that cold here, although it's certainly not usually warm (50s, typically).

And then it dropped into the 30s and snowed in April -- totally atypical. I was dressed in fleece jackets inside my house. But hey, I have saved a lot on my heating bill!

In Seattle, hardly anyone has air conditioning residentially. It only gets hot/humid enough to make any real difference for a few days a year.

 

We water our lawn and use chemicals. We have a nice lawn, and since it's small don't mind mowing it.

Last summer was particularly dry so Rick gave up on watering. Now he's trying to revive the lawn as it looks lousy coming in.

Back on the recycle/reuse. When I recently did a bit of redecorating, the old lamps, some pictures and other household goods went to a local store that sells the stuff really cheap to the public. Better than throwing the "stuff" in the trash.

 

Additionally, as we recycle everything that we can (which is no charge at our local waste facility) I only have to make a trash run for the four cans of trash that we generate about once every six weeks or so.

We do use compact fluorescent bulbs throughout our house, and dispose of them properly as well. I also dispose of our batteries in the proper environmentally friendly way.

Since the late 80's I installed "green outlets" on both our refrigerator and our washing machine. These "outlets" reduce the "in-rush" that an electric motor uses when first starting up. By doing so, it greatly reduces the amount of current an electric motor uses when first starting up.

We also installed high tech triple pane quadruple coated windows in our house. http://www.oxfordwindows.com/windows.htm They guarantee a twenty percent savings on your annual utility bill or they will refund you the difference. For those of you that may be curious / interested and are going to SF08 ask me about the impressive demonstration that they do during their sales pitch. Seeing is believing. It sold us.

I am also proud to work for a company that has achieved ISO 14001 Certification at all of our U.S. facilities. More information about this can be found here: http://ricoh-usa.com/about/environment/ind...p?tsn=Ricoh-USA

At our manufacturing facilities nothing goes to "land fill". Even the food in the cafeteria's either get donated or composted.

Yes, we consider ourselves fairly green, and we do not even have children. But, it just makes sense to us to help preserve "Mother Earth".

 

The builder who built our new beach house is an energy star partner and is the leading promotor of green technology in Sussex county. The home has high efficiency appliances and HVAC systems, excellent insulation and energy saving lighting. We use our bikes to go to town rather than drive and we have installed ceiling fans in all of the rooms to reduce our AC costs once warmer weather arrives. We recycle and have a irrigation syytem which is programmed to go on at night rather than during the heat of the day.