As part of my learning contract, I agreed with Chris to change something about my life and report on the findings from this life change. I decided to, in fact, change three things about my daily life, chosen by me, and make a blog post every week about these changes, how they impacted my environment, and the facts regarding these three changes.
Lifestyle change #2 is actually a lot easier to implement. I once watched a special on TV of ‘greening’ a celebrities home. This piqued my interest as the cost savings and the savings to the planet are huge in scale and scope. When you think about your own consumption, and according to the Energy Star website, the average household spends more than $100 each year to power devices that are turned off. Nationally, this accounts for more than 100 billion kilowatt hours and more than $10 billion in wasted energy costs each year.
A very easy way to combat this was to unplug all the devices I was currently not using. I found this very easy as I live in an old apartment, and so there are few plugs to choose from. I unplugged all my power bars when I would go to school, and plug them back in when I got home, or when I needed the devices.
What I noticed via my live consumption via the BCHydro website is that my kWh usage dipped each day. Each day I unplugged all of my power hogging devices that sit in standby until I come by and power it on. Above is week 1 before I changed any of my habits.
Above is week 2, I typically keep the same work schedule and same school schedule, you can see a change across the board. Most days I cut my kWh in half, and this saves money. The estimated cost for week 1 was $6.50 for power (estimated from BCHydros site) and the week after was $4.89. Not an intense drop, but when you compare it to a yearly rate. $6.50 per week is $338 per year. and if I am diligent I can bring it down to approximately $254.28 per year. A savings of approximately $85 per year. If we had more people do this, we would be able to save millions of dollars per year and thousands of kg’s of GHG in the atmosphere.
Next week, I will discuss the 3rd lifestyle choice change I made 🙂
Lorne Richardson GEO 316 Blog 