Challenge 4 -- Slow the flow

After a week up to our knees in the sublimated version of the wet stuff (okay, it was snow), being careful with water might not seem a major issue.
But how we use it has big impacts. So, this week’s challenge is to reduce the amount flowing into, and from, our homes.

The Challenge: Cut your domestic water consumption as much as possible with a few new habits and, perhaps, a couple of purchases.

Motivation: Daily water use in Toronto averages 253 litres per person. The city’s goal is a 15 per cent cut by 2011. Unless your home is one of those in the inner city still paying a flat rate, using less will save you money. It could also cut greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation. It takes one kilowatt-hour of electricity for each cubic metre of water drawn from Lake Ontario, purified, pumped to consumers, removed, run through a sewage treatment plant. That costs only eight cents, but Toronto used 374 million cubic metres last year. Toronto Water's Lou Di Gironimo also points out conservation's biggest benefit is that it lets the city provide water to more people with less infrastructure. what we don't require, we don't need to build.

Process: First, change a few habits: Turn off the faucet while you brush your teeth, shave, or wash vegetables. If you have a dishwasher, don’t pre-wash under the tap. If you hand wash, use the second sink or a bowl, rather than running water, for the rinse. Next, install a low-flow showerhead and faucets: If you’re more ambitious, get a low-flow toilet. Unhandy as I am, I did it recently and, apart from issues related to the fact I live in an old, jury-rigged house, the installation was easy and it does what it’s supposed to.

Beyond these few challenge items, the list of potential water-saving tips goes on and on and on and on. Again, they range from further no-cost changes in habits to the relatively expensive purchase of a water-efficient clothes washer. Mostly, though, it's a matter of viewing water as a precious resource, not just something that's there in an endless supply that we don't have to think about.

Cost: The city sells water efficiency kits for $15. Toilets cost $100 to $400, but you get a $60 rebate from Toronto Water.  There’s also $60 back if you buy an efficient washer. Again, I’ve done both and the cheques do arrive in the mail.

Savings: The city charges about $1.81 for each 1,000 litres of water. Your actual payback depends on how much you reduce. For some changes, the calculation is obvious: Switching from a conventional to low-flow toilet cuts consumption by seven litres per flush. It would take about 150 flushes to save around $2, but they add up fast. Other results aren’t so immediately clear and you’ll likely need to wait for your next water bill to see them.

Let us know how you do.

--Peter Gorrie

The low- or no-cost route to efficient appliances

Here are more, mostly free tips on how to get more efficient use from your big appliances:

Refrigerator:

• Position it away from a heat source such as a stove or oven, dishwasher, heating vent, or direct sunlight from a window.
• To let air circulate around the condenser coils, leave a space between the wall or cabinets and the refrigerator and keep the coils clean.
• Make sure the door seals are airtight.
• Keep your refrigerator between 35 and 38 degrees Fahrenheit (1 to 3 Celsius) and your freezer at 0 degrees Fahrenheit. (-18 to -15 Celsius.)
• Keep the fridge full.
• Minimize the amount of time the refrigerator door is open.
• Adjust temperature settings for different seasons. Check refrigerator setting by placing a thermometer in a jar of water and leaving in refrigerator overnight. In the morning, the temperature should read 35 to 38 degrees F. (1 to 3 C.) Adjust settings if necessary. Temperature settings usually need to be reduced in winter.
• During winter, freezer space often goes unused. Your refrigerator continues to use energy, however, to freeze this space. Take empty milk jugs, or other plastic containers, and fill them with water. Place them outside until they freeze, then put them in your freezer. This will fill the empty space and reduce the area to be kept cold.

Stove:

• Use the burner that’s the closest match to pot size. Heat is lost and energy is wasted if burner size is larger than pot size.
• Use lids on pots and pans so you can cook at lower settings.
• Pans with warped bottoms use 30 per cent more energy than flat pans. Insulated pans cut energy consumption by 58 per cent; pressure cookers by 68 per cent.
• Keep drip pans under conventional coil burners clean. Don’t line drip pans with aluminum foil — they can reflect too much heat and damage the elements.
• Preheat the oven only when baking.
• Check your oven temperature. Use a separate oven thermometer to ensure your oven control is accurate.
• Make sure the oven door seal is tight. Avoid opening oven door while baking: Each time the door is opened, about 20 per cent of the inside heat is lost.
• Turn oven off a few minutes before food is ready, and let oven heat finish the job.
• With gas stoves: electronic ignition will use about 40 per cent less gas than a pilot light.
• Use the microwave. They use only one-third to half as much energy as conventional stoves.

Washer:

• Match water level and temperature settings on your washer to the size of your load. Don’t fill the whole tub for a few items. Newer machines have automatic water level settings that adjust to load size.
• Call your water utility and ask them how “hard” or “soft” your water is. You may be using up to six times as much detergent as you need. Your appliance manuals will tell you how much you need for your water type.
• As much as 90 per cent of the energy used by your washing machine is used to heat the water. For most washing applications, cold or warm wash and cold rinse are just as effective as hot wash and warm rinse. The rinse temperature doesn’t effect the quality of the cleaning.
• Avoid using too much detergent. Follow instructions on the box. Oversudsing makes your machine work harder and use more energy.

Dryer:

• Use a clothesline or indoor drying rack as much as possible. It will save energy and reduce fabric wear on your garments (the lint on the lint screen is your clothing being broken down). Energy Minister Gerry Phillips says people could save $30 a year if they hung just a quarter of their laundry on a line.
• lf you must resort to a dryer, clean the lint screen after each use. Lint build-up greatly reduces efficiency.
• Overloading the dryer lengthens drying time. Clothes should dry in 40 minutes to one hour.
• Choose a “perma press” (cool-down) cycle. No heat is supplied in the last few minutes, but drying continues as cool air is blown through the tumbling clothes.
• Keep the dryer exhaust vent clean. It should be clear of cobwebs and lint. The moveable shutters should move easily — they’re designed to prevent cold air, heat and insects from entering the vent when the dryer is not operating.
• Dry multiple loads back to back. Because the dryer takes time and energy to warm up to drying temperature, stop-and-start drying uses more energy.

-- Peter Gorrie

The credit card route to efficient appliances

If you’re buying new, choose an Energy Star fridge and washer and the most efficient stove and dryer you can afford. An Energy Star label, by the way, doesn’t mean an appliance is the most efficient, period. It simply means it’s better than others of the same size and with similar features.

For fridges, top-mounted freezers are most efficient, followed by bottom-mount and, the worst, side-by-side. Ice makers and other add-ons increase energy consumption.

Clothes washers can be front- or top-loading. Top-loaders use more water and energy, but they don’t rattle around as much and are less likely to need repairs. Since up to 90 per cent of the energy use comes from heating the water, the biggest potential saving comes from using cold water for the wash and rinse.

Dryers are pretty much what they are. Natural gas versions are more efficient than electric.

The best stoves operate by induction — using magnetism instead of heating up an element to cook food. They apply 90 per cent of the energy consumption to cooking, compared with 65 per cent for a regular electric stove and up to 75 per cent for smooth-top models. But induction stoves typically cost more than $4,000. It might seem counterintuitive, but self-cleaning ovens use less electricity, mainly because they’re built with better insulation to contain the high heat of the cleaning cycle. Natural gas is less efficient than electricity right at the stovetop, but it’s better overall because of the massive energy consumption involved in producing and transmitting electricity.

Challenge No. 1, Climate Savers, Should You Accept

I still buy lunch in Styrofoam containers. I drive to the grocery store some weekends, when I could walk. And no matter how much I whine and cajole, I can't get my husband to turn off the computer modem at night.

Even as someone paid to research and write about the environment, I still ain't no green purist.

I get overwhelmed too. Many choices befuddle me. My one-year-old daughter wears cloth diapers but the studies I've read say they aren't necessarily gentler on the environment than disposables -- especially chlorine-free ones.

And there are times I feel defeated. As in, what's the point of me riding my bike to work instead of driving, if our government won't even commit to meeting its own feeble watered-down green house emission cut plan?

But then, someone like my neighbour Mary-Margaret comes to the rescue. She's the community eco-witch (her term, not mine, but I like it.) She scouts the streets for plantable spots and then calls the city and orders a tree. She saves fliers errantly left in her mailbox to write notes on. She rides the subway with her two kids to environmental protests. And at a crazy party at her house, I noticed she has a bin in her bathroom for tissue to be composted instead of flushed.

I'm not her only devotee. Another neighbour told me she now collects her compost while on vacation and schleps it home to Toronto to be put into the green bin, inspired by Mary-Margaret.

She's proof, in my mind, that one person can make a difference.

And not to get all Kum Bay Yah on you, but I buy the argument that many people making small changes can add up to big impacts. All it would take is one new compact fluorescent bulb in each Ontario home to cut 66,000-cars worth of emissions.

It's the whole getting started part that can be tough.

So, in the lead up to Earth Hour, my colleague Peter Gorrie (much more knowledgeable, experienced and green than me -- think plaid shirt and bicycle helmet during negative 20 weather) will issue a weekly challenge -- for both ourselves and you.

In some cases, you might be leagues ahead of us. In others, we'll have done more legwork (his electricity bill is half the Ontario average, for one.) But, in the end, we should all have made some changes that lighten our load on the earth.

And we want to hear from you -- how you are doing, what you are doing, suggestions and challenges of your own. So hit the comment button. Or send us e-mails.

Think of it as a little green support group. Or the nudge you've been waiting for.

We'll start easy this week, with a positively painless challenge. It's also the first rite of passage for eco-converts.

So here it is.

Challenge: Replace all incandescent light bulbs in your homes with compact fluorescents and slay all indoor power vampires.

Motivation: While most people blame industry for the bulk of our country's green house gases, own personal lifestyles and choices contribute to one-third to half of them. About 16 per cent of that comes from the electricity and heat we pump into our homes -- a lot of it totally wasted.

Old-fashioned light bulbs, for instance, use 95 per cent electricity towards heat instead of light. And since lighting can take up 15 per cent of your home's electricity bill, that's a lot of wasted dollars and green house gases. Especially when there's an easy fix. Compact fluorescent bulbs use a quarter of the electricity their incandescent brothers suck up, and each bulb lasts ten times as long.

Never heard of power vampires? They are electronic gadgets that suck energy to stay on even when you turn them off (Shocking, no?). Things like your television, DVD player, cell phone charger, stereo. The average home has 30, according to Godo Stoyke, author of The Carbon Buster's Home Energy Handbook. (He's a full-time energy-efficiency consultant, but in his spare time, a complete conservation nut. He lives in a solar home in Alberta, which makes that doubly impressive.) To add insult to injury, they can suck up 20 per cent of a home's electricity bill, surpassing even the mighty fridge.

They're like eating chocolate while you're asleep -- super high calories you don't even get to enjoy.

There are fancy tools that will tell you definitively if a gadget is a vampire, and how much power it sucks while in stand-by mode, like the Watts Up and Kill A Watt meters. But, the easier low-tech test is to turn it off and see ten minutes later if it's still warm. (Also, if it has a black brick on its cord, it's a given vampire.)

Process: Don't wait for old ones to run out. Unscrew them now, and replace them with new ones -- opting for cheap bulbs in places like the basement, where you don't care if it glows, and for more expensive ones that cast softer light for your living and bed rooms. Remember, you need to buy special outdoor CFLs for your porch, and special dimmable ones if your outlet comes with a dimmer switch. (Regular CFLs don't work with dimmers.)

As for the vampires, simply unplug the old television you rarely use, and buy power bars for the things like your computer, that you use regularly. Then, it's just remembering to turn the power bars off -- something I fight with my husband about regularly.

Cost: $120 - $100 for 16 light bulbs, and $20 for three power bars.

Savings: Replacing 16 bulbs with CFLs will save you about 1050 kilowatt hours over the year (assuming you keep them on for four hours a day) -- about a month's worth of electricity in my house. Slaying 90 per cent of your homes' power vampires will save you around 1060 kilowatt hours, according to Stoyke. Taken together, that's about $210 in electricity bills, and 600 kilograms of green house gases you've just saved from the atmosphere -- as much as driving from Toronto all the way to Winnipeg (about 2000 kilometres), according to Toronto Hydro's green calculator.

-- Catherine Porter

Reader Philip Ridge offers a variety of helpful energy-reducing hints in the comments section to this post, and has graciously provided an image of his hydro bill as proof that they can add up to impressive savings. Click the thumbnail to your right for a closer look, or click on the "comments" button to see how he did it.