Simply Saving

1. Pass on the paper towels (same goes for napkins)
2. Fill up your freezer, since the fuller it is, the less energy it uses to keep food frozen
3. Dress sustainably (try designers like Linda Loudermilk, Stewart+Brown, Edun)
4. Buy in bulk to avoid excess packaging
5. Spend more time outdoors
6. Seek out reclaimed wood furniture
7. Weather permitting, take your exercise outdoors
8. Think big picture
9. When traveling, ask your hotel what it’s doing to be greener
10. Start composting
11. Choose reusable instead of disposable products (diapers, razors, cups, pens)
12. Prewash dishes only if you have to
13. Install dimmers or motion sensors for your lights
14. Use organic beauty products
15. Buy Fair Trade

1. Use greener cleaners. Baking soda will clean just about anything!
2. Wash clothes in cold water
3. Cover pots on the stove to avoid losing excess heat—and wasting energy
4. Line dry your clothes when possible
5. Find a green dry cleaner, and bring your own garment bag
6. Turn off the dishwasher’s drying cycle
7. Shut your computer down when you leave work—especially on Fridays
8. Vote for change
9. Drive a hybrid
10. Join a food co-op
11. Swap paperbacks with paperbackswap.com
12. B.Y.O.B. (of water)
13. Shred old paper for packing instead of using Styrofoam peanuts
14. Collect rainwater and use it for landscaping
15. Use natural—not artificial—fragrances

by Steve Kaye

We all need to use energy wisely. It saves money, reduces pollution, and makes us better citizens. Here are five uncommon things that you can do.

1) Change time zones.

That is, when possible, travel when others are less likely to be on the road. You will save gas and time by avoiding delays. For example, avoid rush hour traffic by leaving an hour early. Then use this extra hour to read, plan your day, or add a little extra to your job. If your company permits flex time hours, then choose a time window outside of rush hour.

Also, consider shopping early or late in the day. Besides encountering less traffic, you will find that there are fewer shoppers and shorter lines in the stores. That produces a time saving bonus by making your shopping more efficient.

2) Ride a bicycle.

But do this in your car. That is, pretend that you have to peddle in order to make your car move. Avoid quick starts, acceleration up hills, and driving into a stop. Instead, start gradually, take it easy going up hills, and coast to a red light - just as if you were the engine.

In general, drive with minimum effort. You will find that this is also more relaxing, while saving on gas.

3) Shut it off.

Some people leave the engine running when they park. For example, I often see an unattended car in a parking lot with the engine running. This is a terrible idea because: a) it wastes gas and b) it leaves the car exposed to theft.

Similarly, turn off the engine any time that you have to wait for more than about half a minute, such as at a railroad crossing.
Note: most cars use about a gallon of gas/hour while in idle.

4) Stop leaks.

Most homes and offices have dozens of small transformers that supply power to computers, network hubs, printers, modems, scanners, and other accessories. Transformers are also used to recharge batteries in cell phones, cameras, and iPods.

These transformers keep using electricity even when the device has been turned off or disconnected from it. It’s like having a faucet leak around the clock. While each transformer uses only a small amount of electricity, six or eight of them are equivalent to a standard light bulb. Over time that adds up to a significant amount of electricity.

Put all of the transformers on a circuit strip. They turn off the strip at the end of the day. Or, unplug the transformer when it’s not being used. Similarly, check your home for electrical leaks. Unplug any device with a decorative light or courtesy clock (that you don’t need), such as coffee makers, toasters, and small ovens.

5) Be stingy.

Critically evaluate every trip for its importance. Seek ways to combine trips on a single outing. And walk if possible. For example, I used to drive to get mail from my P.O. Box at the Post Office every day. Now, I go every second day and I walk at least once each week. I buy enough food from one store to last most of the week (instead of hopping from store to store or going out daily). And I plan each outing to take care of as many stops as possible in a single loop (instead of making many single trips).

This saves gas and time.

Saving energy is the smart thing to do. It saves both time and money. And that’s like being paid for being a good citizen.

Steve Kaye helps leaders get results. He is an IAF Certified Professional Facilitator, author, and speaker. His meeting facilitation and leadership workshops create success for everyone. Call 714-528-1300 for details. Visit http://www.stevekaye.com for a free report. 

Idea of simple life takes hold
By Elizabeth Weise for USA TODAY

It began as a simple, or simply terrifying, pledge taken by a small group of friends feeling overwhelmed by all the things in their lives. Over a potluck dinner two years ago, they made a pact: Buy nothing new except food, medicine and toiletries for six months.

The effort lasted a year before falling victim to the demands of modern life. But the commercial craziness of the Christmas season brought the group back together a few months ago.

Only now they’re not toiling in relative anonymity. A whiff of media interest over the past month has turned their tool-sharing, library-going, thrift-store-shopping band into a full-fledged cultural phenomenon with more than 700 members joining through their Yahoo website. Groups are meeting in Maine, Alabama, Texas, Oregon and Wisconsin, and satiated consumers in Japan and Brazil are making inquiries.

The original group named itself the Compact after the Mayflower Compact, a civil agreement that bound the Pilgrims to a life of higher purpose when they landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620.

The goal of the members wasn’t so much to save money, or even the environment, as much as it was to simplify their lives, says Rob Picciotto, a high school French teacher who attended that first potluck. “It saved us time because there was less time spent shopping. We still buy groceries and go to the drugstore, but we don’t go to Target on a Saturday, which was a ritual before just to see what the sales were,” he says.

It was Picciotto’s partner, John Perry, employed in high-tech marketing, who initiated the reincarnation of the Compact, an effort that drew the attention of the San Francisco Chronicle. When an article hit the paper’s website on Feb. 13, it became apparent that the Compact had tapped into a very deep stream of consumer discontent.

Today the Compact exists as several local potluck groups who meet to celebrate their successes (a free sewing machine from online Craig’s List) and dilemmas (Do new keys count? What about makeup?). A national and several state-based Web discussion groups serve the same purpose electronically.

Joining is simple, says Julie Fitzpatrick, a third-grade teacher from Madison, Wis., who signed up on the Internet site the day she heard about it on the news. There’s no ceremony involved. “You just say ‘I’m going to do it,’ ” she says.

She has found being in the Compact helpful when she is invited to direct-sale events such as candle or Tupperware parties. “I can say, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve taken a pledge.’ So now I’m out of that circle.”

Still, it’s not easy to refrain from the great American pastime. The desire for new sunglasses was the downfall of Sarah Pelmas, a high school English teacher, when she joined the group two years ago. “It was killing me,” she says. Finally she broke down and bought a pair, stepping onto the “slippery slope” that brought her back into mainstream consumerism. “It was like vegetarians and bacon,” she says: You can’t just stop at a taste. But she re-enlisted in December.

Not that the idea is embraced by everyone. In Chilliwack, British Columbia, Tira Brandon-Evans says that when she and her husband told friends they weren’t going to exchange Christmas and birthday presents, they acted as if she’d suddenly developed a mental illness.

She jokes that from her friends’ reactions, you would have thought she had announced plans to have a sex change or join a satanic cult.

The biggest challenge for San Franciscan Rachel Kesel was a camping trip, which “takes a lot of gear.” But for a fall outing, the 25-year-old student called friends to borrow what she needed. It worked out great, “because it’s so rare that you’re using camping gear at the same time as everybody else.”

Dorice Baty of Monett, Mo., says her family was forced into “involuntary simplicity” when her husband lost his job two years ago. The couple now get by on her salary as a substitute teacher. She likes sharing ideas on how to get by without buying with people in the Compact, whether rich or poor.

“If someone is wealthy and they’re doing this, God bless them,” she says. “If they’ve taken on the challenge, then I admire them as much as the people like me who are struggling.”

But to many, the entire notion seems strange, even downright un-American. Compacters interviewed on the radio have been accused of wanting to destroy the country. Bloggers have attacked the idea as “conspicuous anti-consumerism” and “pretentious.”

Compacter James Glines of Copperas Cove, Texas, says relatives have asked him, “How can you do that? Are you going to steal?”

But there’s a strong history of frugality in the USA, says David Shi, president of Furman University in Greenville, S.C., and author of The Simple Life: Plain Living and High Thinking in American Culture. Religious groups such as the Shakers, the Mennonites, the Amish and some Quakers have long embraced the notion of living a simpler life. Writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau idealized it.
Shi says that for the past decade, Americans have been turning toward “therapeutic simplicity.”

“It’s a function of individuals beginning to feel a sense of crisis in their lives,” Shi says. “The frenetic pace of our high-tech society, coupled with the barrage of seductive messages coming from our consumer culture, have reached a point that many people simply feel like they’re about to self-destruct.”
For Pelmas, it’s about “avoiding the hysteria that seems to govern a lot of our consciousness right now around consumerism. It’s the kind of craze where fathers are beating each other up to get the latest Nintendo for their kids. It strikes me as some strange kind of 21st-century spiritual lack.”

It’s not just her. Surveys done by Juliet Schor, a sociologist at Boston College who studies consumer society, have found that 81% of Americans say the country is too focused on shopping and spending, and 88% think it is too materialistic.

The Compacters are simply the most recent manifestation of a kind of underground mass movement, Schor says. She studies the “downshifter movement” that began in the 1980s with people making choices about earning and spending less money so they could focus on the quality of their lives and their families, typically by working fewer hours or changing jobs.

In 2003, USA TODAY columnist Craig Wilson vowed to buy nothing but food, toiletries and gifts for a year. The column “had one of the largest reader responses ever. Thousands and thousands of readers e-mailed me,” Wilson says.

Just this month saw publication of a whole book about a year without buying. Judith Levine had her own “no more” moment in 2004 and went on to write Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping. There’s even a glossy magazine called Real Simple that taps into the trend, although its focus is more on buying things to make life simpler rather than not buying things.

They’re all onto something, says James Roberts, a professor of marketing at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. “The research is overwhelmingly clear,” he says. “The more materialistic you are, the less happy you are. We get happiness through love of others and sense of community. But we’ve been told by Madison Avenue that happiness can come through the mall.”

For Glines, joining the Compact was about taming the need for the new. “I wanted ways to be frugal without cutting into my kids’ happiness,” he says.
But it’s harder in central Texas than San Francisco, where thrift stores are hip, and people put on things like the “Really Really Free Market” at a park once a month. At that urban potluck picnic, people bring what they don’t need and take what they do.

It’s hard but not impossible, Glines found. Putting in a raised vegetable garden, he was stymied by a lack of nails. But new houses are going up all over the place in Copperas Cove. “I talked to some of the builders, and they had half clips of nails from nail guns they were just throwing away, and they said I could have them. “I just popped them off, and there were my nails,” he says.

For Pelmas, the Compact kept a lot of things out of her life but did bring in something very important — a husband. She had met Matt Eddy, a high school science teacher, through friends several years before, but when she asked him out, he said no. “Then a year later, he was having dinner with some friends, and they said, ‘Oh, Sarah’s part of this Compact where she doesn’t buy anything new.’ Eddy, with his great love of environmental science, instantly rethought his rejection. He called Pelmas, and as she puts it, “the rest was history.” They were married 18 months later. The couple just bought a 1920s house that they plan to bring up to snuff using only recycled materials.
After all, she says, “it’s a used home.”

I’ve been reading quite a bit on compacting. It’s a combination of simplifying, recycling, reducing your footprint on the world and being aware of how you spend your money. From their site, “To go beyond recycling in trying to counteract the negative global environmental and socioeconomic impacts of disposable consumer culture and to support local businesses, farms, etc., to reduce clutter and waste in our homes and to simplify our lives”.

While it’s not a new idea, the attention it’s been getting will surely make more people aware of the three R’s, reduce, reuse and recycle. As I read through some of the compacting blogs and sites, I saw that we already take a lot of the actions they suggest.

I regularly share unwanted books, puzzles, videos and toys with our local homeschool group and what doesn’t find a new home there goes to the library store. They resell them and use the money for library funding. We also just donated four large bags of things to the Humane Society. We buy pre-owned when possible. 90% of our books and DVD’s were bought used as are a lot of our gardening supplies (tools, pots, etc).

Here is their yahoo group if anybody would like more information.