KV Organics

seeking restoration of sustainable life... personally, professionally, & spiritually

energy conservation

Sara Salo

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This month has been super fun and busy for us.  The kids are loving school, we’re all adjusting to homework routines, I’m getting used to quiet mornings with just the baby, and… we got bikes!  This is something that I have been wanting to do for a while now, for both exercise and conservation reasons, but we’ve finally done it – and it was in part, inspired by my new friend Sara Salo.

Sara is an inspiration in so many ways.  She’s focused on helping people eat better and make healthier choices all around, and she is an awesome example of paving a new road in the face of a raging recession – two things about which I’m passionate myself.  Here is what Sara shared with me in an email last spring…

I came up with the idea for the Tour on a long trail run late last summer. I was trying to burn off some steam after getting frustrated with job hunting and all of a sudden I seriously had an ‘aha’ moment! Rather than apply for a job I wasn’t completely passionate about, why not put together something myself?! I knew I wanted to work in school food reform but I also loved cycling. Healthy living really needs to combine physical activity and good nutrition so I figured what better way to spread the word than by bike! At first the idea seemed really far-fetched but as I talked to people and got really positive feedback, I kept moving forward. Then, before I knew it, I had a website and was scheduling stops. And now it’s full steam ahead.  🙂

Check out the video below for an overview of what Sara’s up to while cycling around the country, and/or click here to check out and follow her blog.

 

Circadian Rhythms

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This is one of those “other changes along the way” that I would definitely call a work in progress for me.  As with most things, this one specific change may not be possible for everyone, but the more I’m wrestling with it myself, and researching it, the more I believe that people and the planet would benefit greatly from our living more in tune with natural circadian rhythms, taking our cues for wakefulness and sleep from the sun.

Those who know me know that I am most definitely not a morning person.  So before anyone accuses me of pushing a morning person agenda onto the night owl world, please know that I fight against this one hard in my own life and really wish, on so many levels, that it weren’t true.  🙂

I come from a long line of night owls and have always found myself really ‘waking up’ and most productive somewhere around 9:00 at night.  But, in recent years, with the addition of young children to the mix of my life – at least 3 of whom are already taking on my husband’s morning person traits – I have had to confront this issue.  If I ‘wake up’ at 9pm, get things done, and go to bed around 2am (or later), then I can be one grouchy zombie mama when my kids pop up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (except for the one who takes after me in this regard) at 7am.

The reality is, this issue of my sleep habits affects every aspect of my life.  My relationship with God, my marriage, my kids, my friendships, my work, my health, and my mental sanity.

The number one thing that keeps me up late at night is the computer.  Having electric lights and electronic gadgets makes my day longer than it would be naturally, and it is throwing me off.  I realize the paradox here and feel a little hypocritical, since I’m also trying to maintain a blog, but I really don’t like being online much.  The online world is great for reconnecting with old friends, making new friends, and finding information, but I so much prefer life offline.

When I took my ‘e-fast’ back in February – no internet at all, including email – I felt so good.  Maybe it was the postpartum hormones, but I really think it had a lot to do with unplugging.  I know it did, because when I logged back online March 1st, my brain hurt just looking at the computer screen – and the 500 emails I had to work through.  Ugh.

Since then, I have been trying to get in the habit of turning my computer off with the sun.  And I’m still trying to form that habit – definitely a challenge.

I know that not everyone can do this – some overnight jobs require life in artificial lighting – but there are lots of people out there who, like me, could unplug more frequently at night.  From a creation care perspective, living according to circadian rhythms could have significant benefits for energy conservation, which can in turn improve health for certain populations affected by pollution from energy production.  And, as with so many things about efforts to live a more natural life, living by circadian rhythms can have positive impacts for our own health – physical, emotional, spiritual, and relational.

Here is an interesting article on sleep from Dr. Mercola.  33 tips.

Do you struggle with this at all?  Maybe it’s just me.  If you feel too attached to your computer, like I often do, try taking an ‘e-fast’ for a few days, a week, or even a month.  Let me know what you experience.  🙂

Energy Choice

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We first ran into this topic in August 2009 when a door-to-door salesman for an alternate gas supplier came by.  We decided to give it a shot, signed up, and then forgot about it.

In August of this year, we started getting various offers from alternate electricity suppliers also.  This prompted us to go back and check our bills from the previous year of alternate gas supply, which left us quite skeptical because it turned out to have cost us an extra $129 over the year.  However, since we had also been learning more about energy conservation and green energy, that skepticism drove us to research the topic more thoroughly instead of just tossing our hands up and staying with the utility out of fear of the unknown.

One of the questions a friend (who owns a very successful energy consulting firm in Philly) told us to ask was whether a company was a licensed supplier or a broker.  As I understand it, broker companies are not necessarily bad, but they generally drive the price up because they’re an extra link in the chain getting a cut of the profits.  Turns out the alternate gas company we had said yes to was a broker company…  Ah-ha!  Check – look for a licensed supplier (and verify it with a third-party resource, such as a list of alternate suppliers found on your local utility’s website).

In early November, while still researching energy choice options, we came across Viridian and were really impressed.  Although I have seen some hype and accidental misinformation out there from their independent sales force (which is a risk of using the otherwise solid direct sales model), the company itself is straightforward in its message and mission, and they resonated with us as potential customers because of their green energy focus at a savings.

We decided to become Viridian customers ourselves, and since 1- energy conservation and renewable energy is something we’re also passionate about, 2- it ties in on some level to the work I already do in organics, and 3- I had researched it a great deal and felt I could help answer people’s questions about energy choice in general and the company specifically, I decided to do a little consulting work for them on the side.  My purpose in this is to add a realistic, no-hype voice into some of the confusion & misinformation out there in the popular buzz about both Viridian and energy choice companies in general, and to help people figure out if Viridian specifically would be a good fit for them or not.

So, if you’re looking into alternative energy suppliers, here are a few other things I’ve learned to ask in general, in addition to the licensed supplier vs broker question…

1- Is it a fixed or variable rate plan?  You might be surprised to learn that variable is often better than fixed, though it can depend on your preferences.

2- Are there sign-up fees, lengthy contracts, early termination fees, hidden fees? Can you cancel at any time?  We loved that Viridian was “cancel at any time with no penalties.”

3- If you also care about long-term sustainability and air quality issues (which tie closely into stewardship, pollution, and health issues), ask about a company’s “energy content,” or percentage mix, of “dirty/brown” energy vs “clean/green” energy sources.  For example, our local utility currently uses only about 7-8% renewable sources.  And many of the 3rd party suppliers who are not necessarily “green-focused” in their company vision statements offer about the same.

4- If you want to buy/support greener energy, find out the percentage vs cost. For example, we found that Viridian offers the highest percentages of greener energy at lower prices compared to other green options we’ve seen so far.  Their basic option is 20% renewable energy generally below your cost from the utility (who almost certainly has a much lower percentage of renewable content).  So, their “everyday green” option supports a higher percentage of green power while saving you money at the same time.  And their 100% renewable energy option costs only slightly more than the utility rate, instead of a higher ‘premium price’ for 100% renewable content that other green suppliers are offering.  For example, one company we looked at would have cost us, on average, $24 more per month for 100% renewable energy, whereas with Viridian, we could do their 100% “pure green” option for an average of just $5 more per month.

5- If anyone is showing you an example bill, or when you begin looking at your own bill to compare prices, please make sure you know what you’re comparing.  Supply portion only.  I have seen a handful of reps for Viridian accidentally comparing the wrong two parts of the bill, which made the savings look bigger than it is.  They were very nice people, not being intentionally deceptive at all – they just misunderstood.  The savings is still there, just not as amazing as it may look if you’re not comparing the right things… and it will also depend on whether you’re a low or high usage household.  If you’d like someone to go over your bill with you to help you understand what to compare, get a realistic idea of your potential savings, and figure out if an alternate supplier would actually make sense for your situation or not, I can help you with that since I’ve gone through it myself.

If you want more details on any of the above, feel free to contact me.  There is also a good list of FAQs under the “Energy Service” section of their website.  While obviously Viridian-specific in the answers, these FAQs are good to ask any company you may be considering.

If you decide to you’d like to become a Viridian customer, as we did in our home, would you please consider calling them at 866-663-2508 to sign up (instead of signing up online) and giving them my referring ID#11636?  Disclosure statement – I am not actively growing a business with Viridian, but yes, I will get a small commission for referring you.  Thanks!  🙂

 

 

Earth Exploders

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Ever heard of MTR?  I hadn’t until a month or so ago.  It stands for a common coal mining technique called Moutaintop Removal, and apparently, over 3 million pounds of ordinance is detonated every day, blowing up entire mountains just to get at a thin layer of coal – to help feed my home electricity.  For a variety of reasons, I’m not at peace with that.

Now, to be sure, every source of energy has its benefits and challenges.  Coal, nuclear, hydro, gas/oil, wind, solar, biomass, and others all have their “issues” to be weighed, and no one particular source is perfect.  There will never be a one-source answer to energy problems.  In fact, the best answer has nothing to do with sources – it is conservation.  If everyone used less energy at home, and took tangible steps away from the consumer lifestyle that demands so much energy use across the country to make “stuff” for us that we don’t really need, there would be far less of a problem at hand.  But more on this another time.  In this post, I’d just like to share a bit of what I’ve been learning about MTR so that you can consider these issues for yourself.

From a website for “Coal Country,” a documentary:  “Most Americans are shocked to learn that nearly half of the electricity used in the United States today is produced by coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel…  The tops of mountains are blasted away, exposing seams of coal, while debris is pushed into valleys and streams. Residents endure health problems, dirty water in their wells, dust and grime on their floors…” (liaisondistribution.com).

Many coal companies bury streams with mountain debris and then plead innocent to polluting the water on the basis of there being no water there anymore.  “To date, the legal system has bought this kind of logic to the tune of twelve hundred miles of vanished streams and rivers in the state of West Virginia alone” (Sleeth, p.13).

Not only are we destroying God’s mountains, forests, valleys, streams, and ecosystems to power our country’s excessive consumer lifestyle, but we’re making people in Appalachia (and all around the world) sick to do it.  Both the human health and the environmental sides of this are equally problematic to me, since the long-term health of people depends on the health of this planet given to sustain us.

“A typical family uses 1,800 pounds of coal per year powering just its electric clothes dryer.  An average of 20,000 pounds of forest, dirt, and rock must be dumped in a stream in order to get that amount of coal.  It is easy to rail against greedy corporations and corrupt judges.  It’s a little harder to actually do something about mountaintop removal by changing our behavior” (Sleeth, p.14).  “Environmental topics can get so politicized and polarizing that we absolve ourselves from personal responsibility” (Sleeth, p.65).

We had already started line drying clothes as part of our household move toward “intentional downward mobility” and increasing conservation, but learning about MTR has helped to solidify the commitment that much more.

Wherever you are on this issue or journey, please know that my intention is to lovingly challenge and encourage.  For example, please do not feel bad, guilty, or defensive if you use a clothes dryer!  That is so not my intention at all.  But please do some prayerful soul-searching on these big-picture issues and how our personal everyday choices help combat or perpetuate the overall societal problems.  And please also be encouraged – you cannot make these changes all in a day and that’s OK.  Lord knows I still have a ton to learn and alter myself!  But challenge yourself to continually learn more and take steps to make changes as you’re able.

These days, you can find energy conservation tips just about anywhere. But one of my favorite resources for everything “green” including energy conservation tips is Nancy Sleeth’s book, “Go Green, Save Green: A Simple Guide to Saving Time, Money, and God’s Green Earth.”

Additional quotes above from Matthew Sleeth’s, “The Gospel According to the Earth.”

Laundry Revolution

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Looking for ways to save money and help the environment?  Going green can definitely do both, and revolutionizing your laundry routine can be a good place to start.

Did you know that each load of laundry you hang instead of machine drying “saves 5 pounds of coal from being burned back at the electricity plant” (Sleeth p.12)?  And if you wash your clothes in cold water, you save energy by not using so much hot water.

We have washed our clothes in cold water for years (except for a rare hot wash here and there as needed), but we just put up a clothesline this summer, and we’ve been thoroughly enjoying it for so many reasons.

1- It puts manual labor back into our lives, which we find both fun and beneficial, and helps save money on the electric bill.  (Not to mention… no need to pay gym fees when your life has some exercise built into everyday life).

2- It brings our family closer together as we divvy up who is washing, hanging, pulling down (the kids love to pull down the laundry), and putting away the laundry.

3- It helps reduce our impact on the environment, which ultimately also helps reduce our negative impact on those less fortunate all around the world.

4- It reduces common consumer lifestyle stresses brought on by over-dependence on labor-saving devices.  Example: our dryer actually seems to have gone kaput, and wow, is it freeing not to have the stress of needing to buy a new one!  Our ~25 year old microwave went kaput recently, too; we can do without it just fine.

Now to get our indoor line-drying system and routines in place for winter – and the rainy days of next year’s outdoor drying season.  One step at a time.  🙂

Though I haven’t explored it thoroughly, this link shared by my cousin looks like a good resource for laundry ideas:  www.laundrylist.org
And here’s the Sleeth book quoted above:  The Gospel According to the Earth