Energy is a hot news item. American families are closely watching their budgets and are concerned about rising energy prices. Political instability around the world has made Americans increasingly sensitive about where the U.S. gets its energy.
Environmental concerns also are motivating many people to alter their energy consumption habits. With issues this complex, if one wants to facilitate change, how does one begin? It might surprise some people to learn that they can advance energy independence in their homes.
Conservation works
The typical American family spends about $1,900 per year on home energy costs – a lot of money. Unfortunately, the Department of Energy estimates that much of that energy is wasted, taking a major toll on our budgets and negatively impacting our environment. The Department of Energy’s Web site (www.Energysavers.gov) offers easy, low-cost ways to you can cut your energy use, reduce environmental impacts and save money.
- Install a programmable thermostat. Most households spend up to 70 percent of their energy budgets on heating and cooling. A programmable thermostat makes it easy to set comfortable temperatures automatically and efficiently, shaving dollars off your bills.
- Use compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). CFLs use about 75 percent less energy than standard bulbs, and last much longer. CFLs come in many different shapes and sizes.
- Turn off computers when not in use. Turning off the computer at the end of the day reduces wear and tear on the hardware, and can save an average of $90 a year in electricity bills.
- Wash laundry in cold water. Most loads don’t actually need hot water, and 90 percent of the energy used by washing machines goes into heating. Wash only full loads of clothes for more water savings.
Saving energy – by recycling?
According to the National Recycling Coalition, recycling helps Americans save energy. It requires 40 percent less energy to make paper from recycled paper than it does to make paper from fresh lumber, and recycling aluminum uses 95 percent less energy than is necessary to make new aluminum. Not only is recycling a great way to conserve energy (and other precious resources), it also produces savings on a variety of products that can have a positive impact on the family pocketbook.
Energy independence – via landfill?
Despite American’s best efforts to conserve, we will continue to buy and use a lot of energy. People want this energy to be affordable, reliable, green and (when possible) from domestic sources. Today, more than half of all electricity consumers in the U.S. have the option of purchasing “green power” from their utility. You can find out how to tap into renewable sources of energy by visiting the U.S. Department of Energy’s state-by-state list of providers, or checking with your own utility.
The Department of Energy estimates more than half of the renewable energy currently generated in the U.S. comes from trash burned at waste-to-energy plants or from landfills that convert gas byproducts into electricity, which together provides enough renewable energy to power or heat more than 3.2 million homes.
“Americans generate more than four pounds of trash per person every single day,” said Bruce Parker, president of the National Solid Wastes Management Association in Washington, D.C. “Solid waste companies have long moved beyond simply hauling trash to using technology to solve these major environmental and energy independence challenges.”
How does trash-to-energy work?
When garbage decomposes in a landfill, it creates gas called methane. Innovative technologies allow garbage companies to capture this gas. It then can be used to produce electricity used by the local community or transported directly to nearby manufacturing plants, schools or other buildings and used to power heating systems and manufacturing processes.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as of 2009, 509 of these landfill gas-to-energy projects delivered 1563 megawatts of electricity to corporate and government users – the equivalent of cutting oil consumption by more than 58 million barrels and cutting coal consumption by nearly 350,000 railcars.
Landfill-gas-to-energy facilities power up some surprising customers, including:
- NASA, which uses energy from a landfill at its Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, where space agency employees build and operate NASA research satellites like the famous Hubble Space Telescope.
- The University of New Hampshire, which gets more than 80 percent of its energy from a local landfill.
- General Motors, which since 2000 has used landfill gas to reduce its natural gas consumption by 25 percent.
- Mars Snackfood, makers of Snickers, Skittles and Starburst candies, which fuels the boilers at its Waco, Texas plant with methane piped in from a landfill.
Bruce Parker, president of the National Solid Wastes Management Association, noted that in the last two decades his industry invested tens of millions of dollars not only to modernize landfills and boost the use of trash as a clean source of energy, but to double U.S. recycling rates and make major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution. “Our industry is truly a science-based industry,” he said. “We employ chemists, biologists, geologists, civil engineers, hydrologists, soil experts, and of course the haulers and drivers who are the ‘everyday environmentalists’ – the men and women who keep our communities clean, conserve our resources and protect public health.”
To find out more about how solid waste companies are turning trash into a resource, visit www.environmentalistseveryday.org.
Provided by Family Features
