Cool Facts - Take Action Today!

Excerpted from: http://www.3degreesinc.com/knowledge/facts/

Home Electricity

• Replace three incandescent bulbs in your home with CFLs and reduce your footprint by 300 lbs of CO2 per year for each new bulb (Source).
• Clean or replace filters on your furnace and air conditioner. Cleaning a dirty air filter can save 350 pounds of CO2 a year (Source).
• Get a home energy audit. Many utilities offer free home energy audits to find where your home is poorly insulated or energy inefficient. You can save up to 30% off your energy bill and 1,000 pounds of CO2 a year (Source).
• Wrap your water heater in an insulating jacket.  This reduces CO2 by 250 lbs CO2 per year and saves you $15 per year (Source).
• Use a clothesline instead of a dryer whenever possible. You can save 700 pounds of CO2 when you air dry your clothes for 6 months out of the year (Source).
• Use less hot water. It takes a lot of energy to heat water. You can use less hot water by installing a low flow showerhead (350 pounds of CO2 saved per year) and washing your clothes in cold or warm water (500 pounds saved per year) instead of hot (Source).
• Replace that leaky faucet!  Not only does it keep you up at night, a hot water faucet that leaks one drop per second can add up to 165 gallons a month. That’s more than one person uses in two weeks (Source).
• Insulate and weatherize your home. Properly insulating your walls and ceilings can save 25% of your home heating bill and 2,000 pounds of CO2 a year. Caulking and weather-stripping can save another 1,700 pounds per year (Source).
• Dust off light bulbs. Dirty, greasy, smoky, light bulbs can reduce light output by as much as 10%. Dust your light bulbs regularly. (Make sure they are cool before touching them.) You’ll avoid the tendency of switching to a stronger bulb, which will use more energy (Source).
• Install dimmers. In areas where dimmed lighting makes sense, like the dining room and bedroom, dimmers save an equal percentage of energy as they are dimmed (dimmed 15% reduces energy consumption up to 15%) (Source).
• Recycle at home!  You can save 2,400 lbs of CO2 per year by recycling half of the waste your household generates (Source).
• In a typical U.S. home, appliances and home electronics are responsible for about 20 percent of energy bills. Purchase ENERGY STAR® appliances and operate them efficiently (Source).
• Maximize the use of natural daylight in your home to further reduce the need for artificial lighting (Source).
• Consider installing your own small renewable energy system, such as solar photovoltaic panels, on your home.
• Incorporate passive solar design concepts into your home, which include using energy-efficient windows (Source).

Car Travel

• Aggressive driving (speeding, rapid acceleration) wastes gas. In fact, it can lower your gas mileage by 33% on the highway. (Source).
• Reduce the number of miles you drive by walking, biking, carpooling or taking mass transit wherever possible. Avoiding just 10 miles of driving every week would eliminate about 500 pounds of CO2 emissions a year. Look for transit options in your area (Source).
• Don’t leave an empty roof rack on your car. This can increase fuel consumption and CO2 emissions by up to 10% due to wind resistance and the extra weight - removing it is a better idea (Source).
• Keep your car tuned up. Regular maintenance helps improve fuel efficiency and reduces emissions. When just 1% of car owners properly maintain their cars, nearly a billion pounds of CO2 are kept out of the atmosphere (Source).
• In the market for buying a new car? Choose a more fuel efficient vehicle. You can save 3,000 pounds of CO2 every year if your new car gets only 3 miles per gallon more than your current one. You can get up to 60 miles per gallon with a hybrid! (Source)
• Start a carpool with your coworkers, classmates, family members or friends. Sharing a ride with someone just 2 days a week will reduce your CO2 emissions by 1,590 pounds a year (Source).
• Make the Right Move. If you spend hours on the road every day to get to work you could save some significant time and money by moving closer to work and reducing your commute. The CO2 emissions you save are icing on the cake (Source).
• Stagger your work hours to avoid peak rush hours. You’ll spend less time sitting in traffic and consume less fuel (Source).
• If you own more than one vehicle, drive the one that gets the best gas mileage whenever possible (Source).
• Consider telecommuting (working from home) if your employer permits it (Source).
• Avoid carrying unneeded items, especially heavy ones. An extra 100 lbs in the trunk reduces a typical car’s fuel economy by 1-2 percent (Source).
• When you use overdrive gearing, your car’s engine speed goes down. This saves gas and reduces engine wear (Source).
• Replacing a clogged air filter can improve your car’s gas mileage by as much as 10 percent. Your car’s air filter keeps impurities from damaging the inside of your engine (Source).
• Avoid excessive idling. Idling gets 0 miles per gallon. Cars with larger engines typically waste more gas at idle than do cars with smaller engines (Source).

Air Travel

• Consider vacationing closer to your home.  Reducing your air travel by one or two trips a year can reduce your CO2 emissions significantly.
• At work, substitute video-conferences for meetings in lieu of air travel.
• Choose airlines based on their performance and environmental commitments: Use your purchasing power to show the airlines that their environmental policies matter to you. For example, Southwest Airlines is one of the few airlines that offers incentives for its flight attendants and cleaning crews to recycle cans and bottles. Continental Airlines was commended by Fortune magazine in 2007 for their energy-efficiency initiatives (Source).
• Take direct flights that don’t zig-zag to your location. Most of the fuel used during a flight is burned during takeoff and landing, so it stands to reason that the more connections you make, the more emissions will be produced on your behalf (Source).
• Take the train, bus, or drive instead of flying when you can. Short flights are the worst, emitting more CO2 per mile traveled than medium to longer flights (Source).
• Fly Economy Class.  Business and First Class seats are larger and take up more room.  Therefore, a passenger flying in first or business class is responsible for more emissions because they have effectively excluded additional people from flying on the same flight (Source).
• Fly during the day: Studies have shown that the greenhouse effects of airplane emissions are twice as bad at night than during the day. In this case, environmental concerns may overlap with convenience, since many people prefer to fly during the day anyway (Source).
• Fly in newer, larger, and more fuel-efficient planes: It’s almost an ironclad rule that newer planes are more fuel efficient. The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner promises to be an industry leader when it hits the market, but in the current fleet, the 777, 747-400, and A330 are the most fuel-efficient planes. Call and ask the airline what planes they have flying the route that you are booking (Source).
• Ask lots of questions – generate “consumer pressure”: The environmental issue that airlines are most concerned about is their profits. That is to say that if airlines start to worry about losing customers over their environmental inaction, they will act. As a consumer, you can make a real difference by asking questions of everyone at the airline to generate pressure that will resonate up to the boardroom. Ask whether they recycle, what their environmental policy is, and how fuel-efficient their planes are. And if you don’t get satisfactory answers, switch airlines (Source).