« Mushroom Meatless Monday | Home | Hillsborough County Water Department Love »
Calculating Green ROI
By admin | May 20, 2008
MSN has a great article today asking the important question “Are Green Upgrades Worth the Expense?” While I have heard of the items they feature, I have never seen a clearly calculated return on investment. I know these are upgrades my family needs to make. The first upgrade is CFL lightbulbs. We have done that in most spots in our house, and while I don’t like the color of the light as much, they do seem to last for a long time. In fact we have had them for months and haven’t replaced one. While I know these lights contain mercury, I have also seen plenty of info on how to recycle and dispose of them properly.
This chart from the article clearly shows savings you can reap from changing things around the house. While I hope to do most of these things soon, I have to wonder what I am supposed to do with all the old stuff - specifically the washer and dryer. Donate them or throw them away….or can I recycle them? One question this article brings up is taking into consideration the entire life cycle of the things you buy. I hope to get better about doing this so I don’t end up with so much stuff that has nowhere to go but the trash when its life is over.
Topics: Green Living |
May 27th, 2008 at 2:41 am
I think the best way to avoid throwing out things that still work and keeping costs down is to only replace something when it’s usefull life runs out and then have it recycled. That way we’re not just buying more things we really don’t quite need yet, which is being “Green” in itself. I’m sure you can recycle large things like that but I’m not sure where exactly, try earth911.org for places where you can recycle appliances.
May 27th, 2008 at 8:06 am
In other words…keep the washer and dryer in use until they don’t work anymore. I think this is good advice. I’ll check out earth911 to see what they say.
May 28th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Yeah pretty much unless you just have to have a new set in which case I’d say donate to a place that can use them like a mission home or something so that they’re still get used until they no longer work.