Change your lifestyle to reduce greenhouse gases?

I'm not familar with this, but it looks interesting. Somewhat barter /exchange kind of thing?

Personally, we do a fair bit of donating clothes and other items we no longer want to a group that runs a thrift shop in town. We also buy from them.

The are doing a lot here and in France as well as in the UK.

You are giving and getting stuff for free - actually not related to climate change at all.
More a social network.

Walter--

Any style of recycling conserves resources--and keeps useable material out of the landfill.

Certainly, I agree.

But what is done by FreeCycle isn't actually recycling but giving something used away for free, instead e.g. selling it.

(We have a "recycle bourse" at our garbage collection HQ's any couple of weeks: instead that they collect the bulky waste, you bring it there .... and people can choose if they want it - or it's taken away the evening for internal recycling.)

Our thermostats are programmable. Our house was designed twenty-two years ago to be passively solar (with no windows on the north side, overhangs that block heat in the summer, allow sunlight in the winter, and max. insulation in the 6-inch exterior walls, etc.). We use natural gas & highly efficient furnaces (when we added a children's wing to our house, we installed a second small furnace so that half the house can be at a cooler temp) plus we cook most of our food & heat our hot water with gas. Our electricity comes from hydro-power.

We don't use a/c -- we just deal with the heat for the few short weeks in the summer when it is hot and we have planted deciduous trees on the south & west side to block the worst of the summer sun.

I am getting ready to give up my longtime love affair with my Volvo 850 and exchange it (sob) for a newer hybrid... but meanwhile, I don't drive it often or far. I am within walking distance of the stores & libraries and often share rides with friends. When I do drive, I try not to speed since that uses a lot more fuel and so obviously puts out more emissions, so my mpg is between 22-25. We have almost no public transit in this town, so that's out. I try to have at least one day a week where I don't drive at all. My kids drive good gas mileage cars (averaging 35 and 45 mpg). We have an older SUV but it gets 20-22 mpg and is only used when needed. Mr. Piffka drive a company vehicle. Our boats are powered by oars or wind.

We've removed almost all the lawn and rarely water or mow. Most of the landscape around the house doesn't require any watering and we've kept our big trees and planted others. We do keep up a fountain with an electric pump, but it is good for the wildlife & provides a cooling effect.

I've talked to a guy about installing solar panels -- it isn't that efficient here and expensive but we're considering it anyway. We have installed energy efficient lightbulbs, both fluorescent and halogen almost everywhere.

Some places where I could improve... besides the car... not go on airplane trips (of course, this is hard to do), turn off computers & TVs at the surge protector to shut off the "ghost" energy use; grow more food and buy more from local sources. We've also noticed that we've got some heat leaks in the house & will be dealing with those.

Although it doesn't affect emissions exactly we have recycled aluminum & metal, donated under-used items frequently & not used yard poisons since the 70's. Glass & plastic have been recycled since the mid-90's. Our yard waste goes to a recycler to be composted.

we moved into our house 43 years ago (newly built in what was at that time a subdivision at the outer limits of the city - about 10 minutes to downtown ; in the meantime the city has expanded and we sort are 'city center' now) .
we started energy conservation before it became fashionable ;
- made and installed storm-windows for the basemant windows ,
- storm windows for the two entrance doors ,
- an extra six inches of insulation in the ceiling ,
- insulated basement walls ,
- fluorescent bulbs only ,
- extra insulation for hotwater tank .

we have three 'garburators ' in the backyard and two recycling bins in the shed .
for the first 40 years in canada we drove 4-cyl VW's - starting with beetles , a rabbit diesel and later a passat .
we now drive a 1999 olds-intrigue (6 cyl) , but have cut driving from about 25,000 km to 10,000 km (7,000 miles) a year . since the car is performing well (it's got less than 100,000 km - it's "rustchecked" annually), it would probably be wasteful to buy a new car at this time .

i am astonished at the energy waste going on :
- outdooor christmas lights that hardly anybody looks at ,
- skyscraper office buildings with the lights on 24 hours - even when most people have left the building ; the claim is that that when the buildings where designed the heat output from lighting was calculated into the heating requirements !
- car lots that are illuminated like las vegas
- LAS VEGAS lighting !!!
- cars and busses left idling .

enough the raving and ranting !
gasoline and electric energy are still relatively cheap in nort-america , so industry and households can often not understand why they should save .
higher prices would - rather quickly i think - result in decreased consumption .

and two more :
shopping centers that are so cold in the summer , staff and customers have to wear sweaters , and they are so hot in the winter you have to strip ! the same goes for many hotels !
and when you complain - well , tough , get used to it .

'nuff said !
hbg

ps. taking the train to toronto next week instead of driving .

walter wrote :


we have a 'habitat-for-humanity' recycle store close by .
i use it to drop off unwanted items and buy - quite cheaply - items for home use ; good source for paint , nails etc .
hbg

Interesting.

Before I moved into this condo apartment, I did much more. Toronto, with its massive, ongoing garbage problem, has more or less forced homeowners to be very good recyclers. (Although I can burnish my halo and state that I had a 3-compartment compost bin long before. Glass jars were used for preserving, and eggshells were ground for the birds, among other things.) Generally, I put out 1 small bag of trash for pickup every 2 weeks.

But condo life isn't so conducive to good recycling, even though our garbage chutes are designed to separate recyclable items from non-recyclable. On the other hand, there must be greater energy savings in this mass residence -- I seldom have the heat on.

One note about the fluorescent lights: I have switched to them myself, but people who are prone to migraines often cannot tolerate fluorescent.

Hi everyone, great posts from all! I've been enjoying reading your responses.

So far, 18 for, and 2 souls saying 2 against. I would definitely say the "Nays" are not voting, although we have had lots and lots of "views" here.

This morning's radio station's website poll is reading 66% "Yes" and 34% 'No", so I would say that is beginning to follow a trend.

I'm all for alternative energy cars, but they would certainly have to be at comparative prices. I'm wondering if the automobile industry is willing to make the change though. I've been reading about some big layoffs that will be coming, I believe it's for Ford.

Yeah, I don't get migraines, but I'm waiting for them to come out with fluorescents that aren't so harsh. I really depend on my eyes (for lipreading especially but in general) and fluorescent lighting leaves me exhausted. I had a windowless office for a while with fluorescent tubes and got some pink sleeves for them that improved the quality a bit but it is still nothing I'd want in my house, and there doesn't seem to be a similar sort of converter for the energy-efficient bulbs.

I'm reading farmerman's "Instant On" Water Heaters thread with interest, hadn't really occurred to me what a waste the usual method of heating water is.

You get energy saving bulbs for any lamp(= they fit for any lamp, no converter [I've never used a converter at all]) and in various shapes here, in three different "whites" plus in a couple of "soft colours".

I get regular energy-saving bulbs, but there are a twisty kind that are major energy savers and they are harsh.

OK, they're called "compact fluorescent lamps."

Look like this:



When finding the terminology and the picture, found a lot of reference to their "harsh" light.

Looks like they're working on it, though.

re "harsh light": that's why they are offered here in "soft white" and .... some other white as well (to get the right illumination in your pink room :wink: ).

Re: Change your lifestyle to reduce greenhouse gases?
I answered "no". Having read the initial post but nothing else in the thread yet, here are a few specifics:


I have no car and don't plan to ever buying one. Instead, I'll rent a car whenever I need one. (This happens about once a year.)


In my case, there is no driving to reduce


I don't see what recycling has to do with global warming.

... and then, of course, I don't buy that global warming will have the catastrrophic consequence that the press likes to talk about, and that are notably absent in the IPCC's reports. This takes makes me fairly immune to the moralistic sermons of the global warming preachers.

I'm not sure about the actial amount, but e.g. in the supermarket I go usually, you get more energy savings than regular bulbs - relation in the storage shelves is about 14 ft to 6 ft.

I've seen them, even the ones that are billed as "soft" are really, really not. Again, "harsh" is a repeated criticism, can get cite upon cite if you'd like.

<shrug>

I'll keep an eye on them, I know it's something they're working to improve. It's one thing I really can't compromise on though if I want to communicate after the sun goes down.

re . 'harsh light' :
since we have most of our 'energy saver bulbs ' in table lamps with shades (or kitchen globe etc.) , we don't seem to have a problem with 'harsh' light .
we have replaced the four 'big globe lights' over the bathroom mirror with the 'savers' and the light is indeed a bit harsh - but i don't need to look at me a lot :wink: , so it's ok .
hbg

reyn wrote :

Not to mention that the light is pulsed. Harsh or soft, the stroboscope effect arising from the pulses must be a pain in the eye whenever you watch Deaf people sign.

That could be part of it, makes sense. All I know for sure is that fluorescent light = exhaustion. (More so with lipreading, which requires really sustained and detailed observation, than with watching ASL, which is "bigger," but true for both.)