[summer]

Live Greener: The Student’s Guide

By MAVIS VAZ, MACINSIDERS

We’ve all noticed over the last few months, and even years, that the world finally seems to be taking notice of the fact that we are slowly causing the destruction of our planet. While Al Gore brings up

many good points (a la An Inconvenient Truth), it can be hard sometimes on a student budget to find real, doable ways to live greener. However, with just a little additional effort, there are a few cost-effective methods we can all incorporate into our everyday lives that can make a difference towards helping our planet. Whether you are an environmentally conscious student, and more importantly, if you are not, consider following these little tips. You don’t need to be a tree-hugger to appreciate these tips. At the very least, some of them can save you money on your utilities bills!

In the washroom:

• Fill a plastic bottle full of water and some pebbles and put it in the water tank of your toilet. This will take up the space normally occupied by water and thus, you would be flushing less water down the toilet every time you flush. The design of most toilets in North America uses far more water than necessary. This saves you about half a gallon to a gallon of water per flush—this adds up fast.

• Turn off the water while brushing your teeth. Your toothbrush is in your mouth. There is no need to leave the tap running as nothing is under the running water waiting to be washed.

In the kitchen:

• Use the microwave instead of the oven whenever possible. The microwave uses 20% of the energy that an oven does. Also, the second hand heat from the oven puts an added load on your air conditioner in the summer.

• Use the right pan. Choose the pan you want to cook in and put it on the element that is roughly the same size. Mismatched burners and pans unnecessarily waste energy.

Doing Laundry:

• Only fill the washer to about ¾ full. This serves two purposes: for one, you won’t use more energy than necessary, which can happen with small loads. Second, your clothes will come out cleaner rather than when you fill up the washer.

• Use cold water instead of warm or hot water. Believe it or not, only about 10% of the energy used by a washer goes to the washer cycle. Much more goes to simply heating up the water. Look for detergents that are designed specifically to work in cold water: they cost about the same as the regular stuff.

• Hang dry your clothes. For those of us living in apartments, we know the cost of doing a load of laundry can be about $4. Even if you don’t live in an apartment, hang-drying your clothes makes them last longer (think no lint, ie. fewer fibers being pulled out of your clothes). If you must use the dryer, only dry those clothes you desperately need and hang-dry the rest. Unlike your washer, the amount of energy a dryer uses is proportional to the weight of items in it.

In your room:

• Switch to CFL lightbulbs. Again, these are similar in cost to regular lightbulbs, use 75% less energy and last longer!

• Unplug unused items. Turning appliances off isn’t enough; they are still using energy as long as they are plugged in. I find this one a little but harder to do because I tend to have several things plugged in at once. A good way to get around this is by plugging your electric items into a power bar. Just switch off the power bar at night.

• Adjust your computer settings so that the computer and monitor go to sleep after they have remained unused for a certain period of time. Not only will this lengthen the life of your monitor, but it can use up to 80% less energy than constantly having your computer in awake mode.

These tips are all cost effective and require only the slightest bit of effort on your part. It is true that sometimes you will be sacrificing the littlest bit of time to make that extra effort. But remember that even the smallest efforts add up over time. We don’t all have to be Al Gore to help reverse the devastating effects humans have had on our planet.

Some of the following links were used as resources for this article. Both offer more tips for living greener:

• Student Tips for Sustainable Living
• The Harbus

[davey]

wowie! thanks for all those tips!! i do most of those things already but the toilet thing is pretty clever!!

oh, and i haven't used an oven for like 8 years... ahaha. the microwave does it for me. =]

[temara.brown]

I'd also recommend checking out the recycling in Hamilton website that has a very handy list of what can be recycled, how you should sort it, as well as what goes in the green bin. Print out the lists and post them in the different rooms they mention so your housemates/roommates know about this as well =)
- Green Bin site
- What goes in the green bin
- Recycling in Hamilton
- What goes in your blue bin

[__lexington]

Thank you thank you thank you!

Not enough people appreciate how far this little things we do can go! I will proudly say I do about half the things on this list already..soon to be all