One Geek, One Earth

Over the weekend, Aurora attended a birthday party for one of her friends (the first of 3 parties over 3 consecutive Saturdays). What was neat was that it was located at a place called The Scrap Exchange in downtown Durham. Their goal is to promote environmental awareness through creative reuse of what would normally be considered junk. Their party room had big barrels full of various pieces of scrap - foam shapes, empty CD cases, loose pieces of wrapping paper, small corks, and a bunch of other things that I didn’t recognize from coming from something specific.

The kids were encouraged to wander aimlessly and just pick out scrap to use to make an art project in conjunction with scissors and tape (no glue, bad for the environment). The kids (and the adults) had a blast. Joy even found a scrap piece of gray tile that she may be able to use for a backdrop for photographing her jewelry and it only cost her a quarter.

This place is a great to emphasize the fact that a lot of things that we throw away could probably be reused in a creative way.

Click the image for the larger version.

For the most part, I don’t mind if large companies have smaller brands that are organic (I’m not buying organic out of protest), but it does leave open the question of how organic these small companies actually are. I will say that Muir Glen’s canned tomatoes are fantastic and come highly recommended by Cook’s Illustrated.

I was just reading this Salon article about vampire energy, the energy that appliances pull when plugged in, even turned off. I knew about this already, but it was a good kick in the butt to try and do something about it. The big culprit in my house is the plasma TV. According to that article, when plugged in and not on, it uses roughly 1,400 kWh per year (about $160, depending on where you live). Obviously, every person’s TV will be different. The manual for my Panasonic says it uses .2W in standby condition, but it doesn’t say what the time measurement is. It does use a maximum of 515W at maximum usage. We only really use it for about 5-6 hours a week (the wife and I are plowing through old Amazing Race episodes lately). But there is no reason not to unplug when not in use.

My computer is a bit harder. I turn it off when not in use, but the way it is set up, if I were to unplug it from the wall, the cable modem and router would be turned off. This is bad for two reasons:

1. I suck at networking. I consider the fact that I have a wireless network up and running fairly smoothly a minor miracle. I worry that the more I turn the router on and off, the more likely it is to screw something up in the network. Plus, Joy and I are home at different times during the day and she needs the wireless connection too.
2. We’re on digital phone service through Time Warner, so off with the cable modem equals off with the phone too, and while we don’t get a lot of phone calls, the ones we do get are important.

The other issue in my current house (and something I plan to think about when we move) is that a lot of our outlets are not easily accessible, making it a pain in my rear to constantly plugging and unplugging electronic devices. I don’t want a desire for convenience to get in the way of saving electricity, but I also don’t want to be spending time that I could be using to do other productive things. In the new house, I’m going to try and get Smart Strips in place that shut off the flow of electricity automatically after a certain idle period, so something else will do the work for me. In the meantime, I’m going to leave the router plugged in, the TV unplugged, and most of the kitchen appliances unplugged as well.