Savings

Savings was Originally Posted on October 28, 2005 by lavarock

I was watching Oprah yesterday where the topic was saving the environment; primarily stopping the loss of life as we know it.

Leo DiCaprio was speaking about cutting back on fuel use to help reduce weather problems caused by Global Warming.

At least the point was made that not all scientists agree that Global Warming is the problem others think it is. I personally agree with this.

I do try to practice some forms of conservation, but sometimes it is not easy. It is difficult to weigh conservation with being cheap.

In some places in the country, residents are encouraged to recycle items, but then are charged extra to have those items picked up.

When you look through the supermarket aisles for items in reduced packaging, those purchases may cost you more than ones in more intricate packaging.

I personally use fluorescent light bulbs for a number of reasons. Here in Hawaii we pay a lot for electricity and any way to reduce that cost is helpful. Fluorescents cost more up front, but save you a bunch on electricity and also generate less heat. With less heat you may also reduce your cooling bills.

I have replaced the spark plugs in my truck and will have an oil change soon. These help with fuel economy and unfortunately, I only get about 17 MPG but had to buy a utility vehicle that had 4-wheel drive for the farm.

I do plan trips into town because of the distance and costs involved. It is not easy to plan these trips to avoid retracing step AND to compare prices at the same time, but it is possible.

Here many houses are designed to capture the trade winds to cool the house, and to keep overhead sun from heating the house too much. As I have said before, I do have a bit of a problem at night because the temperature does drop down cooler than I like. A small cover keeps me toasty warm at night.

Although I use a washing machine and try to make full loads, the machine does not have the ability to adjust water level. Luckily the water cost here is low. I am lucky that I can use a solar clothes drier, which I built myself. It involved a trip to ACE Hardware to buy 2 pulleys and a long rope…. Works like a charm.

I want to replace my water heater with a tankless system, which would only heat the water on demand. This can save lots of money over a regular heater which cooks water all of the day and night to keep it up to temperature. Many people never flush their tanks and end up losing efficiency because of it. I suggest anyone who wants to flush his or her tank, go to a hardware store and ASK how to do it, or look for instruction on the Internet. It involves turning off the heat source, draining and flushing the tank, refilling the tank and then starting the heat source again. You do NOT want to heat the tank without it being full! This procedure can be done every 6 months to a year or more often if you have lots of sediment in your water.

On Oprah there was a suggestion of unplugging electrical items when not in use. Many of the suggestions were “OK” but I suggest that many may be of dubious savings. For example, one suggestion was to unplug the toaster when not in use. Unless your toaster has some kind of timer or clock, unplugging it will not help a bit. They suggested unplugging cell phone charges from the wall when not in use. Although the charger will use a small amount of current when not in use, it uses more when actually charging the cell phone. Clocks use very little current and may be a better choice than a battery operated one where the battery may contain toxic materials.

Here in Hawaii we generate electricity in many different ways because we cannot just run a big extension cord to another state as they can on the mainland. Thus we tend to think a bit more about conservation, yet may have less ways to actually conserve. When we create trash, we also have to bury or ship our trash off island to get rid of it. It is always something to consider when buying things.

In stores I see lots of local fruits and vegetables for sale. That is great because we don’t need to import as many items to consume and that saves trucking and shipping costs and thus reduces the amount of fuel used to get items here. Because we consume AND produce items, we help to fill empty shipments heading back to the mainland. You can help by purchasing more Hawaiian goods J

On another topic, you may have been following the recent events around the world with disasters and storms effecting areas, which grow coffee. Hawaii has been lucky to escape these problems and this year looks to be a bumper crop for coffee. Early returns show tremendous yields!

As for me, I’m still clearing parts of the farm and getting the area ready to plant little keiki plants. It will take 9 months or a year before those plants are ready to go in the ground. Photos will be posted soon as I prepare thousands of these little plants!

In the meantime, for those who like to conserve a bit of money, I have an Ebay sale for 1 pound coffee bags with free shipping. I also will be offering sales during November and will have some Gift Baskets available for Christmas. Since I don’t sell enough of those to order non-coffee items in bulk, I usually just browse the stores to see what is on sale J

The 2006 calendars are in stock and posted on the website at ItsKona.Com https://www.itskona.com