Valley Green Tips: Funergy and fall savings
Have you seen the Monarch butterflies yet? I usually see them on my flowers in the fall as they stretch their wings in preparation for their southern migration. It may be too early to migrate but with a few leaves spotting color and the cooler temperatures at night, we’ll soon be seeing more of them as we close windows and doors, and turn on the heat. The household bill-payer will start to chide family members to try harder to conserve energy, water and other resources to save some money. But unlike most austerity measures in government, trying new ways to conserve at home can be fun.
Maybe you ask family members to come up with mutually agreed upon goals such as saving a certain amount of wattage or costs on the utilities bill compared to last year. Challenge members to come up with fun tactics, and reminders that are displayed creatively throughout the house. Global Stewards online eco-tips suggest using the money saved to do something fun with your family or if you have children, to consider increasing their allowances by the amount saved to encourage them to get involved.
Families can have fun exploring other conservation ideas at the Mt. Washington Valley Green Team’s second annual Family Funergy Festival Saturday, Sept. 24 at Cranmore Mountain Resort in North Conway. This is a free event that features a full slate of kid-friendly activities and green living exhibits and demonstrations running from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Kids can make s'mores in a solar oven, investigate layers of soil in a soil pit, or participate in the Nike Sneaker Fling: Kids bring their old sneakers for recycling, try their hand at the sneaker toss, and learn how sneakers can be recycled into such things as gymnasium floors.
See what you can learn and how conservation can result in funergy all fall and winter long. Here are few more conservation tips shared by members of the Mount Washington Valley Green Team that may be fun to try and save dollars besides. Consider sharing your own tips through Facebook or other contact information provided at mwvgreenteam.org.
Tips:
1. Rid your house of energy vampires! Energy vampires are appliances and electrical equipment that suck up power even when they are turned off. You can spot many of them by the characteristic green or red light that stays on even when the device is off. Eliminate multiple vampires with smart adaptors/power strips that allow you to plug in more than one device and shut them all off with one click after first powering down sensitive devices like computers and cable boxes.
2. Immobilize the wall warts. Unplug your cell phone when not in use. Only 5 percent of the power drawn by a cell phone charger is used to charge the phone. The other 95 percent is wasted when it is left plugged into the wall. Craig Snow of the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative this summer reported that families can save $2 a month on their electric bill for each re-charger they unplug.
3. Be creative in your reuse. Everyone (I think) reuses items like jars and yogurt containers to save or repackage leftover meals. And that old clothing can be reused as rags or donated to thrift shops. But did you know that jelly jars make good juice glasses or that the inside liner of a cereal box could be used to wrap a sandwich? You know the socks with no friends we accumulate? You can use those for dusting — perfect for the kids to wear like mittens — if you can get them to dust.
4. Keep a bucket in the bathtub to fill while running the water to get it to temperature. Use it for mopping the floor, rinsing the tub after the shower, or flushing the toilet (takes some skill). You can save 1.5-2 gallons per shower, times the number of showers in your house per day times 365 equals the gallons per year that you do not have to pump or dispose of. Also, make a rain barrel to capture water for use in gardens on a sunny day. You can go low tech. Use a rubbish barrel with a cover — a used one. Run a gutter into it and take out the water with a modified one gallon milk jug that you are reusing for the purpose. Don't buy anything new for this. Keep your eyes open for plastic barrels.
The Green Team and Family Funergy is supported by Charter Sponsor Cormack Construction Management, Inc. PSNH is also a sponsor of this year’s Funergy event.
Valley Green Tips is brought to you by the Mount Washington Valley Green Team, a non-profit group dedicated to greening the Valley through programs including Valley Community Gardens, education, recycling programs, and Family Funergy events. For more information and other Valley Green Tips, visit www.mwvgreenteam.org.