Earth Day - April 22, 2007

Earth Day Tips

1. Go carbon neutral by buying carbon offsets or renewable-energy credit.
2. Be sure to turn off your office lights every night.
3. Find alternative ways to commute to work and play.
4. Change all the lights in your house from incandescent to compact florescent lights (CFLs) and reduce power consumption by as much as 80 percent.
5. Use a reusable bag when you go to the store.
6. Exorcise the phantom loads in your house.
7. Turn down your water heater to 120 degrees.
8. Improve your heating and cooling system with easy home improvements.
9. Can't decide between a laptop and a desktop?
10. Eat less shrimp.
11. Sign up for a "Don't Send" service to reduce your junk mail.
12. Start swapping out your old appliances for energy efficient Energy Star-certified ones.
13. Go Green with your Spring Cleaning.
14. Recycle your old computers and printers responsibly and for FREE.

Tip 1: Go carbon neutral by buying carbon offsets or renewable-energy credits.
Are you a newcomer to the carbon neutral world? Here is a quick rundown of what you need to know:

Carbon offsets are reductions in carbon in one place that cancel out carbon emissions in another. Imagine planting trees that reduce the same amount of carbon in the atmosphere as you put in driving to work every day.

Renewable energy credits (RECs) are tradable certificates representing renewable energy that replaces the dirty power you buy from your utility company.

Here's an easy step-by-step guide to going carbon neutral: remember the two main challenges: A) make sure your offset retailer is selling a legitimate product; and B) resist the temptation to use offsetting as a license for carbon indulgence!

1. Calculate your carbon footprint. Your carbon footprint is a representation of the effect you, or your organization, have on the climate in terms of the total amount of greenhouse gases you produce (measured in units of carbon dioxide).
2. Purchase offsets from a retailer endorsed by Clean Air, Cool Planet's recent independent audit of 30 carbon offset retailers.
3. Purchase RECs from a reseller recommended by the nonprofit Center for Resource Solutions

Tip 2: Be sure to turn off your office lights every night.

Tip 3: Find alternative ways to commute to work and play.
Go to Commuter Connections - www.commuterconnections.org to find out what carpools, vanpools, buses, and metros can bring you to work. You can even sign up for its emergency “Guaranteed Ride Home Service,” which will bring you from work to your home in case of an emergency. Even better, commute to work and around your neighborhood on your bike. It's good for the earth and for your cardiovascular health!

Tip 4: Change all the lights in your house from incandescent to compact florescent lights (CFLs) and reduce power consumption by as much as 80 percent.
Every CFL can prevent more than 450 pounds of carbon emissions from a power plant over its lifetime. If every American home replaced just one light bulb with a CFL, we would save enough energy to light more than 2.5 million homes for a year and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of nearly 800,000 cars.

Warning – CFLs contain mercury and should not be disposed of in normal waste.

Tip 5: Use a reusable bag when you go to the store.

Tip 6: Exorcise the phantom loads in your house.
A whopping 40 percent of household electric use goes to machines that have been turned off.

Phantom loads are those items that use electricity even when they are turned – off a doorbell, microwave, TV, VCR, computers, printers, plug-in alarm clocks, lamps with black boxes at the plugs, your phone charger, etc. Don’t leave chargers plugged in and turn your computer to “Sleep” or “Idle” mode.

Put electronics on a power strip so they can be easily turned off each night. You can also outfit the power strip with a timer so it can turn off at a predetermined time. That way, all electronics will be fully off when not in use. Consider a battery or wind-up alarm clock. Unplug appliances when not in use.

Tip 7: Turn down your water heater to 120 degrees.
You should not have to mix the hot water with the cold water for your shower.

Also, turn down the thermostat on your water heater in the summer. You don’t need to be warm during summer, right?

Tip 8: Improve your heating and cooling system with easy home improvements.

1. Get a programmable thermostat and use it to turn the heat way down (e.g. 60 degrees) when you are at work and 65 when you are in bed asleep. During the summer, a programmable thermostat can be set at 75-80, depending on the time of day. Every degree you drop saves you up to six percent of energy consumption for heating.
2. Get out your caulk gun and walk around the house sealing up any leaks around wires and pipes.
3. Weather-strip windows and doors.
4. If you can’t afford to change all the windows in your house to high efficiency Energy Star windows, try interior storm windows. This is a perfect "Do It Yourself" project and can really help cut down on heat loss from a building.
5. Plug up the damper in your fireplace with an inflatable balloon designed for that purpose.
6. Install insulating blinds or window quilts to cut down on heat gain in the summer and heat loss in the winter.
7. Insulate! Several types of very good green insulation are on the market and available locally.
8. Use a nanotechnology additive to paint to improve insulation to the interior and exterior of your home. Ceramic additives can also greatly reduce heat loss or gain. They are completely nontoxic and can be added to any kind of paint.

Tip 9: Can’t decide between a laptop and a desktop?
The mobile way will cost you up to 80 percent less in electricity, and you can do your work in the sun!

Tip 10: Eat less shrimp.
For every pound of shrimp that is harvested, 10 pounds of ocean floor, sea life, and coral are destroyed. Why?

Shrimp are harvested using the very destructive bottom trawl method, which essentially scrapes a metal plate across the ocean floor, scooping up all shrimp and any other marine life on the bottom of the sea that it comes across.

On the other hand, farming shrimp in shrimp ponds encourages the destruction of mangrove forests in and around coastal areas. Mangroves are important habitats for juvenile marine species and also important buffers against storm surges and tsunamis.

Tip 11: Sign up for a "Don't Send" service to reduce your junk mail.
Unsolicited mail uses 62 million trees a year in the U.S.

Tip 12: Start swapping out your old appliances for energy efficient Energy Star-certified ones.
For the biggest bang, go in this order: washer (save up to 54 percent in energy use), dishwasher (24 percent), refrigerator (13 percent), freezer (10 percent), and dryer (10 percent).

Tip 13: Go Green with your Spring Cleaning.
Keep your home clean but also protect yourself from chemicals and irritants in commercial cleaning products. Save money, too!

There are many disadvantages to using commercial cleaning products, including their potential health risks and their contribution to urban water, outdoor, and high levels of indoor air pollution in your home. In 2003, 10 percent of all poison exposures reported to poison control centers involved cleaning products. Half of those exposed were children under the age of 6.

Tip 14: Recycle your old computers and printers responsibly and for FREE.
If you're a local Washington, D.C., metro area resident, recycle your old computers and printers:

Sunday, April 22, 2007
11:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. at Freedom Plaza
E Street (between 13th and 14th Streets)
Washington, D.C.