W A T E R :
The water portion of the paper was fascinating: I had to determine exactly how much water I used, day-by-day, in litres, by measuring how much came out of each faucet in our house over the course of 10 seconds, multiplying that by 6 for the amount per minute, tracking the number of minutes the water was running, and then calculating the total number of litres used.
Here are the water measurements I calculated:
- bath: 3.25L/10s = 19.5L/min
- toilet: 6.8L/flush
- bathroom sink: 1L/10s = 6L/min
- kitchen sink: 2L/10s = 12L/min
- kitchen washtub for dishes: capacity 4.5L
- washing machine: 3.0cu/ft capacity (approx. 85L) – always cold water, so heat for hot water not a factor
- shower: 1.55L/10s = 9.3L/min
- coffee pot: 12 cups (240mL x12) = 2880mL or 2.88L
and the end result was that, the first week (which we were to treat as a control week, using the second week to try to lessen our consumption), my water useage was just over 2400L (which, weirdly, a quick search on Google tells me is the same amount of water it takes to produce a single hamburger, from farm to plate)! NB, my second week, I managed to reduce this to about 1550L, which still sounds like a LOT.
E L E C T R I C I T Y :
The electricity portion, on the other hand, was a little staggering: turns out that, while I thought we did a pretty good job at keeping our electricity use down, we still had a long way to go. This was a much much more intenssive process that involved reading all the amp and/or watt readings on our appliances, tracking how long each of them was on (including idling times), and then determining the number of kWh used per day for each of them.
...a number of things stand out:
- Laptop: 64.98W - charging: 97W approx (about 34% more power according to standby.lbl.gov)
- Laptop w/ new power adaptor: 90W - charging: approx 120W
- PC: 600W
- PC monitor (LCD): 100W
→ this means a) that it's waaaay less energy to use my laptop than our PC, b) that my newer, fancier power adaptor also uses more energy. hmn, and c) that our fancy LCD computer screen uses as much as a very strong light bulb.
- Television: 95W
- radio/CD player: 13W
→ turns out listening to the radio IS better for you!
- microwave: 1100W
- coffee pot: 1200W
→ in fact, making big pots of coffee, turning them off as soon as they're done, and then nuking them when they get cold is more energy efficient. maybe.
- washing machine: 1200W
- clothes dryer: 2760W – 5520W
→ the clothes dryer uses more than twice the energy of any other appliance, and is in fact even more energy-intensive than our fridge!
We've been hanging clothes on our lines as much as possible since then...
which is way more human-energy intensive - like, it adds at least an extra 20 minutes to each load of laundry - but which saves 45 mins, or about 2.3Kwh, of electricity.
My first week's total useage was around 36kWh.
But the point here is twofold: reducing your consumption of resources is good for the environment, but it's also pennywise. Our electricity is currently $0.05600/kWh (five and a half cents); at 1100 - 1500 kWh/mo., we're therefore looking at between $62 and $84 monthly. Obviously cutting things like the use of our dryer down helps us save money. But, as my essay asserted, according to Ontario's Independent Electricity System Operator, just under 70% of Ontario's electricity needs are met by a combination of hydroelectric and nuclear power (Independent Electricity System Operator, 2009). That's a far cry from the U.S., where natural gas and coal provide the bulk of electrical power (U.S. EPA, Energy and You, 2008), but there are still environmental consequences to our electricity's generation.
While the general perception is that hydroelectricity produces little-to-no environmental pollution, because of the flooding it usually causes, the process of building massive hydroelectric dams does in fact strongly impact surrounding ecosystems, both terrestrial and aquatic (U.S. EPA, Hydroelectricity, 2007). However, in the past few years, scientists have begun to look more closely at the environmental impacts of hydroelectricity, and an article published in 2005 in the New Scientist finally suggested that “hydroelectric dams produce significant amounts of carbon dioxide and methane, and in some cases produce more of these greenhouse gases than power plants running on fossil fuels,” due to the fact that when a reservoir is first flooded, the trees that end up underwater begin to rot (Graham-Rowe, 2005). As we now know, methane is a major greenhouse gas, being 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide (Graham-Rowe, 2005), and rotting wood releases vast amounts of both methane and CO2 (stored in the wood through photosynthesis) into the atmosphere.
Nuclear energy, which accounts for around 30% of the electricity in Ontario (IESO, 2009), presents a number of environmental hazards, from the initial mining of uranium (which, among other things, uses fossil fuel-burning machines) to substantial amounts of water used for cooling, to consequent water pollution, and finally to the generation of radioactive waste, which has a half-life of around 25,000 years–meaning it remains dangerous for a quarter of a million years–and for which there is no accepted disposal method (David Suzuki Foundation, 2009). More immediately, in some cases nuclear power plants are also reported to “emit radioactive material, imposing cancer risks on its workers, their children, and people in surrounding communities” (David Suzuki Foundation, 2009). However, despite these obvious problems, nuclear energy is still the best option for electricity generation in a world where cutting CO2 emissions is really paramount for moving towards a healthier climate. A June 2008 article in Wired magazine goes further: “There's no question that nuclear power is the most climate-friendly industrial-scale energy source... the reality is that every serious effort at carbon accounting reaches the same conclusion: Nukes win” (Wired, June 2008).
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