Sunday, December 2, 2012

No Impact Week - Day 5: Energy

Thursday was no/lower energy day so we figured we should reduce the use of appliances and lights around the apartment. In addition, we turned the heat slightly down from chilly to what felt like none existent. (not completely off so the pipes wouldn't freeze but the heaters were cold so I'm not sure that made any difference.)

Oh yeah, and at some point, this happened...

This is pretty much what we did step-by-step:
1. Make a list of all appliances and lights and anything that uses electricity, whether re-chargeable batteries or plugs, etc.
2. Look at list.
3. Unplug everything possible. (including TVs, radios, stereos, whatever you have! We put these on a powerstrip and turned the whole thing off. Also, your wifi router - not on the power strip - can be unplugged when you leave the house.) We didn't have THAT much stuff but it was nice to try to make some new habits. For example, I always unplug the coffee machine and toaster but I'd never thought to unplug the microwave before.
4. Figure what we could cut down on...and then forget about list.

Basically, we didn't enforce anything super strictly, but we only used what we needed. Tried to open the fridge and freezer less (by putting everything in a pile beside the fridge before loading it in) though this didn't always work. The temperature outside wasn't quite low enough to empty the freezer but it might be later on.

One thing I found really challenging was not using kitchen appliances as much. Since we were relying on mostly unpackaged, unprepared foods, they needed quite a lot of cooking (ie. beans: 12 hours of soaking, 2 hours of boiling - who knew!?) This brought up interesting questions for whether these would just be easier to purchase packaged and pre-cooked so as to save the energy used cooking them since they're probably done more efficiently en masse. The guide recommended eating raw foods but since we'd planned the menu at the beginning of the week, we didn't really have this option. Though I'm wondering, what raw foods produced locally could have served as a meal? Any thoughts?

That evening we tried to keep the lights off as much as possible. Although it felt like we'd missed the point since we were sitting in the dark on our computers, we still played hide and seek! (oh yeah, I kid you not :) ) and some board games (though we had to turn the light on at some point because we couldn't see the board clearly by candlelight.)

Which brings me to my last and final point, candles. I had candles burning all day long pretty much, but not the good kind. From what I understand, only beeswax and soy candles are good, whereas all other candles have some kind of plastic content and are burning different toxins into your air. I was just trying to get rid of the candles I already have instead of chucking them, but honestly, I'm not sure that's a good idea even. Any thoughts on this?

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