Sunday, November 14, 2010

A Green Milestone

I try to be environmentally sensitive, think about my use of resources but I am far from perfect.  I enjoy travel and I will occasionally go to the market for just one forgotten item that I must have.
In an effort to assuage my guilt for these lapses we have had solar cells installed.
 Today we hit a milestone.  Our cells have generated 10,000 kWh in a little over two years.  Much of that is peak summer power when we are away at our mountain home which is totally solar.  What we are not using is fed back into the grid.
According to the control center we have saved 17,000 lbs of CO2 from entering the atmosphere.
I try to be environmentally sensitive in other ways.  I usually bundle errands and if the weather is fine I often bike for small errands.  I usually dry my clothes on a rack and wash in cold water.  I have even been known to dip out the warm bath water and dump it in the washing machine.  OK, I'm a bit eccentric but I do what works for me when it comes to the environment.

6 comments:

Sylvia K said...

It's always great to learn what other people do to help the environment and all of this sounds terrific, Martha. Hope you have a great week!

Sylvia

Yogi♪♪♪ said...

Wow, that is totally cool. We are trying to be greener but we have a long ways to go.

Diane AZ said...

Congrats on your green milestone! It is great to hear what others are doing to conserve resources.

We cut down on our consumption of material goods by enjoying what we already have...until it's really worn out. :)

Johnny Nutcase said...

great post, and well done! Love hearing that other people care! :)

Sallie (FullTime-Life) said...

You are making a difference! Who cares if you're a bit eccentric -- that's one of the privileges of being "a certain age."

We do try to keep our heat and or air at a lower (or higher) temp, and cold water for sure, and recycle (both OR and FL have good programs where we live -- we sure don't find many opportunities to do so when we travel though.


We use too much fuel probably for traveling but I feel like since we just have tiny houses that makes a little trade off. I learned to bundle errands when we drove only the truck because I don't drive it. Now even though we have roadtrek which I can drive, it is second nature to do all the errands I can at one time.

Gaelyn said...

This is SO awesome Martha! I really like the idea of selling power back to the company. I'm pretty good about bundling errands. Of course we do use a bit of fuel when on the road. Yet I'm pretty sure over all we use less energy than most home owners.