Fix your power leak

If you had a leaky faucet, you’d fix it, right? Of course you would. In addition to driving you insane, the dripping would raise your utility bills, and even the non-environmentalists among us don’t enjoy such a complete waste of a resource as this. (At least I hope, particularly with what’s been going on down south.) And yet many people don’t realize that the appliances and electronics around your house are in essence creating dozens of leaky outlets, slowly draining your finances and the earth’s resources for no reason at all. The power used is called “phantom drain,” and it uses a small amount of power even when things are turned off. Not everything is affected, (lights for example), but most consumer electronics, things like cell phone chargers, speakers, TVs, dvd players, etc continue to suck power out of the wall even when off. The solution is to get a power strip, and plug all nonessential items into it for easy total off/on action. You’ll want to leave your Tivo off the strip, but aside from that, almost everything can be plugged in with no problem. You should notice a difference in your bills, and you’ll be saving resources as well.

Footprint Forward

Attention low impact high lifers! There’s a great event coming up at NYU to help you learn how to live lighter:

NYU Footprint Forward Week (November 5-12) is about making an active difference in a livable way. Though presentations, workshops, a guidebook, and an online community, we hope to inspire over 500 students and community members at NYU and in the surrounding neighborhood to live as close to a zero net impact lifestyle as possible for the duration of the week.

While low-impact living necessitates some changes in lifestyle, Footprint Forward is ultimately about doing more, not less. It means making choices that are within the boundaries of our professional, academic and personal needs that help sustain our school, our city, and our world – as well as ourselves.

Footprint Forward begins on November 4th with a private workshop with “No Impact Man” Colin Beavan and culminates in a community wide lecture in the Great Hall at Cooper Union on November 12th. Throughout the week there will be positive impact events, lectures, volunteer opportunities, social opportunities and more. All are welcome to participate to whatever degree they are comfortable.

To register and attend, click here. Hope to see you!

Feed the worms

New Yorkers generate more daily garbage per capita then any other people in the world. Not a contest we should be proud of winning. There are lots of ways to cut down, but one of the most efficient is to compost your food scraps. Nearly 20% of New York’s trash is food, and through composting, you can turn that garbage into rich, healthy soil. If you’re not lucky enough to have a yard for a compost bin, try putting your scraps in a bag in the freezer. That will keep them from smelling, and then you can take it every week to one of the locations on this handy Green Apple composting map. (The Union Square Greenmarket has drop bins available every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday.)

Green Power

Here’s a really quick step you can take to seriously decrease your carbon footprint without making a huge dent in your wallet: green power. Here’s a blurb from the site:

If just 10 percent of New York’s households purchased green power in conjunction with their electricity supply, it would prevent nearly three billion pounds of carbon dioxide, 13 million pounds of sulfur dioxide, and nearly four million pounds of nitrogen oxides from getting into our air each year.

You can easily sign up online with your Con Ed account number. I signed up through Con Ed Solutions, which means I get a single bill, and 100% of my electricity is generated from wind power, one of the cleanest sources available. The premium for wind power is 2.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, approximately an extra $8.75/ month for a typical household. (Of course, if you have a small place, and are careful to conserve energy in other ways, you’ll pay less.) So for around $100/year, you can remove yourself from the fossil fuel economy. That’s a bargain at twice the price.