You’re all about saving the environment while saving some money on your electricity bill, right? What if you aren’t nearly as green minded as you think?
Take a look at these ways you’re failing to be green, all in the name of being environmentally conscious. Instead of just thinking that you’re being green, make sure that your strategy is working instead of being completely counter-productive.
Relearning Recycling
How’s your recycling? Do you put everything you can manage in the recycling bin? You need to stop doing that immediately.
Some items are inefficient to recycle and slow down the entire process. Diapers, plastic bags and wrap, plastic tops and shipping envelopes are but some unrecyclable items, according to Mother Nature Network. Others are hazardous to the environment or the recycling plant employees, such as aerosol cans, hazardous material, compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs and medical waste.
Increasing MPG Not As Green As You’d Think
Have you been switching things up on your car to get the best MPG possible? After all, if you aren’t using as much gas, isn’t that less harmful to the environment?
If you’ve been using subpar parts to eke out the best mileage you can manage in your car, you’re doing more harm than good in most cases. These parts break down faster, especially if you don’t bring your car in for regular servicing. Motorists can also do more for the planet by using quality recycled parts, rather than buying new.
Specialized Chevy service recycling centers, as well as those from other car manufacturers, are popping up in order for motorists to easily find quality recycled parts.
Energy Vampires
Turning off all of your lights and electronics is great for the environment and your electricity bill. But you can go a step further with your energy conscious strategy by learning about energy vampires. Energy vampires, according to the California Energy Commission, are appliances and electronics that continue to pull energy from the outlet even if they aren’t turned on. The only way to guarantee that a device isn’t using power even while turned off is to unplug it entirely, unplug the power strip it’s using entirely or use a special device designed to stop power draw from your outlet when it’s not actively turned on.
Some of the worst devices for being energy vampires include televisions, cable boxes, security systems and sound systems.
Timing Your Lights
Saving the environment and high electricity bills is not as cut and dry as simply turning off all the lights every time you take a step out of the room. However, it can be more energy efficient to leave some types of lights on if you’re going to be out of the room for only a few minutes, according to Energy.gov. Some light bulbs wear out faster if you’re constantly turning them on and off, so it’s important to be aware of what kind of bulbs you have and how best to handle them.
Incandescent lights are ones you can safely turn off every time you leave the room. Halogen lights operate on the same lines. The CFL rule of thumb dictates that you should turn it off if you’re going to be out of the room for longer than 15 minutes, since their lifespan is highly affected by the amount of times they’ve been switched off and on.
LED lighting has zero negative consequences for turning it off and on as much as you’d like, so turn these off when you leave the room.
Tagged: Energy Vampires, environmental issues, green living 
