I walk or cycle to destinations within 10km. For weekly shopping, we take a shopping cart on the train. For longer trips, we take public transport where possible, or car pool otherwise. Got rid of the car some time ago. The side benefits are I save $1300/year on registration and insurance, plus even more on fuel and maintenance. I work my transport needs with my physical exercise program, and save time at the gym.
I’m slowly embarking on a program of replacing servers (business and hobby related) and other machines which run for long hours with more efficient embedded PCs, which can reduce energy consumption by 70-90%.
Meetings for committees and Boards of interest groups I am a part of are being increasingly conducted online, which reduces the need to travel. In some cases, this is the only practical option anyway.
Dress to suit the weather. In winter, this means using less heating and putting on more clothes, and even covering up with a blanket. In summer, exactly the opposite. As we are naturists, clothing often reduces to zero in the hotter months (when at home and there’s no visitors), which in turn reduces the amount of laundry. We had no problems handling the Jan-Feb 2009 heatwave, where outside temperatures exceeded 45C (113F) and indoor temperatures approached 40C (104F), with nothing more than a fan and tap water to help the body’s natural cooling system. There are two A/Cs here (came with the house), one has never been used, and the other only once or twice, a long time ago. Other bonuses are bare feet avoids fungal infections such as tinea, and skin rashes (particularly in the groin) tend to disappear, as the whole body gets a chance to air.
Drink tap water. It’s good for you, it’s cheap and it’s the best for the planet.
This post was submitted by Tony.
Zowie 45C is freeking hot!! I live in a climate where we have humid summers.
Sleeping in 30C (pretty well no sheet over you) is comfortable; but hotter than that gets uncomfortable and by 35C I find it very hard to get asleep.
When we went vegetarian /vegan we went down to our highschool weights (body weights we had not seen in >20 years). One difference is that the summers are now cooler and the winters are colder.
Yes – drink water. Not cows milk – that’s for calves who are going from 100 to 800lb in a rush. Don’t drink fruit juices – that’s just sugar water. Eat the fruit and get the fiber, vitamins and phytochemicals.
We just got a new (to us) car – Toyota Echo. Sadly it’s the most fuel efficient thing that one can buy (without spending $30k+) But we bicycle and walk so much that it’s not worth spending >$10k on a car. We really missing our ’91 Chevy Sprint – it got much better milage than the Echo; but then it’s engine was half the power!
For computers – consider swapping out the power supply for 80Plus certified ones. It typically drops the power draw by 25%. But getting away from power hungry >1GHz CPUs offers much greater savings. The 2.6GHz AMDs I buy are about 45W power draw, more for the quad cores – but much less power draw than Intels of comparable speed.
Comment by Eric — January 22, 2010 @ 12:44 pm