Doing Good Things Without Spending Money

It was Michael Moore that said in his movie Bowling for Columbine that we are supposed to be afraid and consume. If you are afraid of crime, you should buy a gun. If you are afraid of having an inadequate car, you should buy an SUV. If you are afraid of being fat or unhealthy, you should buy diet or other special foods.

In this way, for many people, doing good things for yourself or for the world means spending money.

In fact, sometimes the best things come for free or for not very much money.

The obvious example of this is heirloom plants. Most of us realize, for example, you often get a much nicer plant if you get seeds or other propagation material from a fellow gardener than if you go to a garden center, or even a specialty plant shop and spend a lot of money. I’m going to depart a bit from the usual gardening topics, and offer some suggestions on how you can apply these principles to other things as well. In particular, I’m going to try to make some suggestions that won’t have a major impact on your current lifestyle.

Energy and Greenhouse Gases

There’s no shortage of things you can spend money on if you want to save energy or protect the environment. You can buy double glazed windows, hybrid autos, compact fluorescent light bulbs or high efficiency home appliances, among other things. Sometimes you can even get tax deductions or subsidies for buying these things. In fact, it sometimes seems we are all saving up our money so we can buy one of these things after another. If you buy an energy efficient car or appliance today, you can be sure in a few years time there will be something better to buy. If you spend money on new windows for your house, you can be sure you’ll have to take out a loan that takes years to pay off, and it will take ages to make up the cost in energy savings.

It’s always the official line. In order to save the environment, we need to spend more money. If it’s not consumer goods, it’s more expensive green energy or carbon offsets. Just spend five minutes trying to convince someone who is determined to spend money on something like this they are wasting their money, and you’ll realize you are wasting your time. It takes a very strong will to do something different, and to stand up to the official line.

Most of these so called energy savers have some things in common. They all involve energy to make, transport, market and dispose of. Things like compact fluorescent lights and the batteries in hybrid autos are made with heavy metals and other very toxic materials, and are major disposal problems. In addition, the energy involved in putting some of these things on the market are much more that just in the manufacture. You have to consider most of these items have companies behind them, with employees who have to drive to work and travel for business. In order to accommodate this travel roads and other infrastructure need to be built. Marketing takes energy too, to support everything from billboards to in store promotions as well as traditional media outlets, all of whom have employees who travel, and so on. ‘Green’ energy like biofuels, often take more energy to manufacture then traditional energy sources. The amount of energy that goes into things we buy is more than many of us realize.

Lots of people would argue the points I make in this paragraph above, but let me be clear I stand by them. Take the issue of heavy metals and toxic materials in products. Many people would say these problems are not an issue, because they can be recycled.

If you had a used compact fluorescent bulb, would you know where to take it for recycling? Not many of us do, or at the very least are faced with getting in our car and transporting it a long distance before it can be recycled.

Even if you do know where to take things for recycling, do you really trust they will recycle it if it is cheaper to dispose of it? Much of the technology needed to recycle things currently being sold, depends on technology that doesn’t yet exist. In this world of privatizations, corruption and the quest for profits, many things that we think are recycled are really disposed of, sometimes illegally and often in developing countries. Similar arguments could be made for manufacturing energy use, and in the real world the energy costs are real. It’s always better to not buy the product in the first place.

There is always an excuse why disposal is not a problem, or the assumption technology will somehow solve the problem for us in the future, but not always many people who acknowledge the problem really exists.

Most of the time you can actually save more energy if you don’t buy anything!

If you need to buy something new, like a household appliance or a car, you should always look for the most energy efficient alternative available, but as an alternative also consider something smaller, cheaper and simpler than what you currently have! As a consumer, you should always demand the products you buy are as environmentally friendly as possible, but never rush out to buy something you don’t need because it is marketed as environmentally friendly.

Also, consider the possibility of buying something second hand. The energy you save in the manufacture of a new item may offset an awful lot of the energy loss in having an appliance that’s not as efficient.

Cars are a good example of this. If you want to drive an SUV, and buy one second hand, it will be much less of an energy hog in the long run than if you buy one new. If you want to drive a hybrid car, buying one second hand will reduce both manufacturing energy and toxic disposal problems. Above all, think about how what you buy will be disposed of, and avoid buying something new that is toxic or that will otherwise be a disposal problem. If you are a few years behind everyone else in choosing what you buy, and buy it second hand, you can be part of the recycling solution rather than the cause of the waste and energy problem.

Thinking Outside of the Box

This is a very North American expression that means making bold and risky decisions, and taking a creative approach to problems. Often these decisions go against what everyone else is telling you is right.

For example, it’s been discussed recently that in the US that about the same amount of fossil fuels are used by cars as in the manufacture of food. In Europe a slightly lower percentage is used for food. The majority of this energy is used for animal products, because first crops have to be grown as feed for animals. The amount of energy in processed foods is also very high, again because first the crops have to be grown and then processed.

You can save a lot of energy by eating only non-processed vegetarian foods or locally raised grass feed meats, probably more than you could save if you drove an energy efficient car or simply drove less. Remember the true costs of these foods are distorted by massive government subsidies, that despite all the rhetoric about ending farmers subsidies, continue to be paid.

As an alternative to replacing all of the lights in your house with compact fluorescent bulbs, consider doing an energy audit of your house and try to reduce unnecessary usage instead.

If you have a 60w incandescent light bulb, and you replace it with an equivalent compact fluorescent bulb, it will use 13w instead. A large percentage of this difference in energy consumption can be made by replacing the 60w incandescent bulb with a standard 40w or 25w instead, perhaps even a 15w bulb. The use of timers or timed switches, can reduce the amount of time the light is on, and save more energy. Many people would find this a better alternative to the harshness of a compact fluorescent bulb anyway.

Many people would be astonished the amount of power their appliances use in standby mode. Many modern appliances that are supposedly new and energy efficient use less energy only because they have an on/off switch and can be turned completely off when not being used.

It can be a useful exercise to go through your house and turn everything off or unplug everything until your electric meter stops turning. When you go to bed at night, your appliances should not be using electricity without reason! Kate at Cider Press Hill turned off or unplugged everything and her meter was still turning. A lot of careful searching revealed the floor dimmer switch on her halogen light was the problem. You may be surprised what you find if you do this yourself. Troublesome appliances can be turned off using a power strip with an on/off switch, a cord switch, perhaps a hardwired switch to your household wiring or just unplugging them when they are not being used.

By using standard light bulbs but reducing the wattage and hours they are on to the minimum necessary, as well as turning off standby appliances when they are not used, you will probably save more electricity than buying compact fluorescent light bulbs.

After all, the bottom line is how much energy you use, not how many energy efficient appliances you buy!

Central Heating and Cooling

If you live in a very cold climate, there is probably little substitute to making sure your house is a weather proofed as possible.

Many of us live in a temperate climate, where heating and cooling are only needed briefly through the year. In this case, you should certainly deal with major problems, seal large holes and take reasonable steps to weather proof your house but there may be better alternatives to spending a lot of money on insulation or new windows.

First a gas powered space heater is more efficient than central heating where heat is distributed via water pipes or forced air. With a little planning, it can be easier to heat just a room or two by closing doors when your heat comes from one place.

Even with central heating, you can save a lot of money by turning off the heat in rooms when it’s not needed, and turning it down or off when you are out or at night when you are asleep.

It is true that heating up an entire cold house can take a lot of energy, meaning turning the heat down or off for brief periods may not save you much energy. At the same time, if you can turn the heat down for longer periods (6-10 hours) combined with only heating a few rooms, you can save a lot of energy.

Since I live in a house with several floors, what I like to do is turn the heat in the house as low as possible, and when I’m cold go up to the attic for a while. We have several large windows in the attic, that let in a lot of light all year round. This sunlight means the attic is always warmer than the rest of the house. In the summer, when it’s warm, I go to a downstairs room to cool off.

If you already have a functioning heating system, you shouldn’t go out and buy a new one for no reason. If you do need to buy a new one, you may want to consider these ideas.

The same ideas can be applied to cooling systems. If you need to cool your house, you can do it only as needed in one or a few rooms at a time. If you have a custom house built, or you are moving, you can think about having a room or two that you can shut off from the rest of the house and cool only when needed.

For many people in a wide variety of climates, a solar hot water heater is a good option. If you have a cold winter, you may need to drain it from time to time in order to keep it from freezing. If cost is an issue, and you are good at do-it-yourself projects, building your own is a real option. It’s also possible to buy a system pre-made and installed. A good option is to have a small inexpensive hot water heater and put the solar water heater in front of it. In this way, the non-solar hot water heater only operates when necessary.

Applying these principles to food

In the same way it’s possible to do good by not spending money on other things, it’s possible to do this with food too.

Again here the official line is we all have to spend more money on food in order to be healthy. We are supposed to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables, and depending on where you live there is other advice for eating other quantities of food like fish and dairy products. You never hear we are supposed to eat less.

If you are afraid of sugar, you are supposed to drink diet soda. If you are afraid of fat, you are supposed to eat fat substitutes. If you are afraid of carbohydrates, salt, meat, pesticides or whatever it is that you are supposed to be afraid of, there is food you can buy for a higher price that has a ‘safe’ alternative to what you are trying to avoid. The same thing is true with things we are supposed to need more of, for everything from Omega-3 to Vitamins.

By breaking food up into components, and selling us substitutes or enriched foods, food companies make a fortune and we eat more unhealthy processed foods. Food companies make even more money by selling us certified foods, like certified ‘organic’ or ‘Fair Trade’.

You can save a lot of money, and eat healthier foods by avoiding processed foods and chemical additives, and emphasizing simpler foods like plain fruits and vegetables, and small portions of starches like whole grains or potatoes. Many people are very happy and healthy as vegetarians, but if you do eat meats, use moderation.

Rather than buying certified organic, try to buy foods locally from someone you trust who doesn’t used pesticides or other chemicals or choose foods that don’t normally need a lot of chemicals to produce (see the list near the bottom of the page). In this way it will probably be cheaper, and you will support your local economy.

By eating in this way, you also meet the criteria of most of the widely recognized and credible dietary guidelines.

Above all, if you are not hungry, don’t eat. It’s not necessary to be afraid of your health, and buy and eat more food as a result.