KwH per month- lowest yet!

I averaged 3.29 Kwh per day the last couple months. Granted, that doesn't take in to account hot water or the radiator, neither of which I have control over (giant boiler in the basement is responsible for both of those and they aren't metered for me) other than trying to minimize the use of them. BUT it does include lots of electricity from my dyepots and my horribly horribly inefficient fridge.

At any rate, even with what it would take to heat my water and radiator heat (which is off- I wonder if having a central heating/water heating source is more efficient, past that you can't turn it off), I am about 1/2 way there to the 90% reduction project's "90 kwh PER HOUSEHOLD PER MONTH" goal.

As a side note, while comparing to the 90% reduction project... I:
-Use less than 100 gallons of gas a year to fill my car (this may go up as I work more outside my house, but is unavoidable), compared to their goal of 50 gallons, and the national average of 500 gallons/per person. The 100 gallons also is taking in to account other people driving me, like to family reunions and such, since I only fill up the tank for my car maybe every other month or a bit more often (and not usually all the way, and it usually has a quarter tank left). My car holds about 14 gallons of gas, fyi, and gets ~23 mpg, so not great (old car).
-If I switched to green energy totally (from my electric company) I would totally be under the kwh limit.
-Garbage and recycling- average is 4.5 pounds of garbage. I probably have a pound or two a day, sadly (and more recycling- lots of glass bottles)- mostly food that goes bad, and I don't have a compost bin handy.
-Water- goal is 10 gallons. Even without my business I probably don't meet this, though I use maybe 10 gallons a day for my business (lots of greywater!). I probably don't meet this simply because I like to take a hot bath every other day, and that is probably quite a bit of water right there, even without filling the tub all the way up. So I would say..maybe 15 gallons a day. Of course, work is supposed to be factored in, but... still, better than nothing.
Consumer goods and food I will get to later, but I will say that my cat probably fits the goals more closely than I do- junk food is my downfall, though I do eat a lot of organic local food (which sadly is plastic encased)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey there,
Just writing in response to use of greywater - I thought I'd point your attention to the website http://www.greywaterguerrillas.com/ - The Greywater Guerrillas, who recently published a book entitled Dam Nation: Dispatches from the Water Underground. It details not only water politics worldwide, but goes into step by step instruction on installing greywater systems. They have received a lot of recent media attention, 2 of them being in the New York Times as well as on ABC's Nightline. There are links on the website to both stories. Check them out!

Best,

Lisa Gonzalves
Oakland, CA