By Rick Kaempfer
When I saw the title of the book, "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Green Living," (by Trish Riley, Alpha Books), I knew it was going to be perfect for me.
My wife and I have never really been on the same page when it comes to green living. She's militant. I'm more "I don't think I will-itant." I like the idea of being greener, but I've never actually been motivated enough to seek out the information. To be honest, my brain starts to cloud over when the discussion gets a little too scientific. Hence my excitement at the "Complete Idiot" portion of the title.
My wife couldn't contain a grin when I brought it home.
"Don't get too excited," I said. "I've been leafing through it already, and we won't be doing any of the suggestions that cost 4 digits or more."
"That's fine."
"No hybrid cars, no solar panels on the roof, no re-insulating the entire house, and positively no new construction."
She nodded, happy that at least I was taking this first step. And you know what? The first step really wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be.
*We now use fluorescent light bulbs.
They use 70% less energy than regular bulbs.
*We are avid recyclers
My wife no longer has to go picking through the garbage every week to fish out the recyclable material I've unwittingly thrown away.
*We try to use buy more eco-friendly products
Whenever possible, we avoid purchasing things made out of plastic. 80% of trash in oceans is plastic.
*We don't use a lot of energy unnecessarily.
Both my wife and I routinely walk around the house turning off lights that aren't being used and unplugging electrical items that aren't needed. It's not being cheap. It's being eco-friendly.
*We have low flush toilets
I hated them at first, but now I can't remember why. They save 3 gallons of water on every flush.
Plus, we unwittingly lucked out in a couple of other areas.
*Our water heater is in a warm room
This helps save energy because it doesn't take as much to heat up the water as it would in a cold room or the garage.
*Our yard has several shade trees near the house
This helps reduce the amount of sun that gets into our house in the summer, which reduces our need for air-conditioning.
In other areas, we have a long way to go.
*None of our appliances are "Energy Star Appliances"
Although, when our current appliances break down, we will look for Energy Star-rated appliances: washing machines that use 50% less water and energy, dishwashers that use 25% less water, and refrigerators that use 15 to 40% less energy. They don't cost much more, so why not do it?
*Our thermostat settings are not optimal, and probably never will be
According to the book, setting your thermostat at 78 in the summer and 68 in the winter will save 5 to 15 percent in energy usage. We've decided to pick our poison there. I can't sleep when it's hot in our room—so we can't do the 78 in the summer thing. I figure I'm helping out the environment by opting not to. My crankiness (after not getting enough sleep) would have certainly added to the noise pollution problem.
*We're not getting a push mower
I had one as a kid, and I'm sorry—we're not going there. We've got a big yard and I'm not getting any younger.
*We're not turning off the shower while we lather up with soap and shampoo
I had to re-read that portion of the book twice. Do people really do that? That seems a little ridiculous.
The book has lots of other suggestions that we'll probably do (like collecting rain water for irrigation purposes), and lots of other suggestions that we'll never do (like installing waterless urinals? nuh uh), but at least it got us started on the right path.
And I no longer feel like a Complete Idiot.
This article originally appeared in the Green Issue of Shore Magazine
