It's somewhere in the bottom of a drawer in a bathroom, I think. I'd guess that it's 15 years old. I recall using it once in the last year; before that, I couldn't say. I think I probably used as much electricity in that incident as a clothes drier uses in about 10 seconds.
I also take my own bags with me when I go shopping: big blue tarpaulin things with handles that Ikea sells for a buck; I have 20. Resources went into making them, but I'm not constantly using up more disposable bags and then tossing them away to live in the landfill for a few centuries. We grocery shop by car about once every 6 to 8 weeks, and keep the fridge freezers and pantry well stocked with food for that time, while walking to buy fresh veg and missing items in the interim.
Other than that, we use the car maybe once a week, for me to deliver work about 12 blocks away that has to be delivered by hand, or to go out for a load of cat food for our own and the ferals, or maybe just to go buy underwear at the slightly up-market-er Canadian Wal-Mart equivalent (we have Wal-Mart; I don't shop there), trying to look for domestically produced items. Same for produce: I aim for domestically produced.
We put all the cans and bottles and paper products in our household in the recycle. Unfortunately, my irresponsible cost-cutting city council has just gutted what had long been just about the best recycling program on the continent, and I can no longer put my styrofoam meat trays and plastic yogourt containers in the blue box.
I'd prefer not to acquire any of them in the first place, for sure. But I haven't yet figured out how to do that and still keep eating. And still have the time to earn the money I need in order to keep eating. Individuals can't change everything single-handedly, and it isn't entirely unreasonable for me not to want to go live in the forest and live on berries. And the work that I do, to earn the money to buy the food, is of some social value.
We compost kitchen waste. We buy very little in the way of prepared/overpackaged meals. I cook food in batches for freezing (in things like those yogourt containers), to cut down on hydro use, e.g. by cooking several casserole-type dinners in the oven at once, or several meals' worth of rice in one pot. There are no "leftovers" in our house, and certainly not in our garbage: there are, instead, tomorrow's soup or lunch. We eat a moderate amount of meat -- my co-vivant is diabetic and has to go light on those carbs -- and a fair bit of dried bean things.
And we keep the heat below 68F in winter. (Unfortunately, I accepted the govt's shilling to switch to electric baseboard from oil when I bought the house 22 years ago, so it's expensive, but it does mean that we can zone heat a largish house occupied by 2 people, heating only one room at a time.) In summer we run a small single-room air conditioner in the ground floor back room, only when it is otherwise absolutely intolerable (I'm sure you'd be surprised at how many days the temp where I'm at has topped 100F in recent summers, and that's without our horrific humidex), and sleep on the couches downstairs on those occasions. We're not 18 any more, and the heat and humidity can be a bit hard to take.
I don't have an air conditioner in my office, the upper floor of a duplex house. It gets might hot and sticky for a couple of weeks in summer. If I weren't so lazy, I might put one in. As it is, I content myself with sticking my feet in a bucket of cold water. Fortunately, I'm self-employed.
And, on two tiny city lots, I have planted what are now 4 mature trees (three cheap fast-growing birch and a linden), along with several in earlier stages of development (mainly catalpas that volunteer every year from a mature one down the street); urban trees are essential to air quality, not to mention quality of life. I ripped out the lawns, and a bunch of asphalt, in favour of perennial gardens (that require less water than lawns and no chemicals). And a few tomato and pepper plants that are soon going to deluge us and a couple of neighbours with food. The birch trees specifically shade the southwest facing back of the house and help to keep the interior temp down.
Lemme see. We use tepid water for washing clothes (cold for my own, but the co-vivant, who is the laundry-doer, thinks he needs warm) and cold for rinse (in a small portable washer never used unless full). I haven't ironed a thing in several years. The dishes get done every 2 days or so (by hand, could you guess?), both because the c.v. can't do this without making a great big production out of it so he prefers to do it less often, and because this is a more efficient use of the water and electricity resources. The hot water heater is of course set at a moderate temp.
Can't think of anything else that might interest you, but do feel free to ask! Aren't ya glad ya did??
http://www.lead.org/leadnet/footprint/intro.htmMy ecological footprint is 51.4% of the "average American" (I assume USAmerican) footprint. I lose because it's really hard to buy locally-grown in-season produce where I'm at, I'm sure, and because of the "average" size of my house (even though it's heated and cooled very moderately), and because I never take public transportation ... simply because I don't need to go anywhere. ;)
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