Last night, when I finished checking my mail, I saw this site from Yahoo!: Yahoo! Green. Worth taking a look. And I'm happy that by the day, more and more people are stepping up for making a change. And more are trying to make the left-out people aware. But what makes me wonder is that are people just writing or are they really taking steps? I'm pretty sure that people must be doing it, but sometimes, I just wonder...
Anyways, there are a few tips on the yahoo site than what I gave in my very fist post... like saving water, gas and electricity. Reason being that I think these changes will have to come with habit change... and will take longer time than anticipated, so, why not start with some tips that are instantaneous, right!
I have the habit of being a miser when it comes to electricity... probably got it from my grandfather.
My grandfather lived with all his sons back home... and together, we were a family of 12. So, the electricity bill was huge. My grandpa took the responsibility of paying the electricity bill with the pension money that he used to get every month. But I guess the bill was huge for him to pay, he was retired and used to stay at home entertaining himself by watching TV, reading novels/magazines, talking to his grand kids often, taking care of the house by going around and looking out for potential problems.
One of his habits was to go in every room and see if lights are on... if they are not being used, he used to turn them off... something that always pissed me off, because frequently our timing matched so much that whenever I'm out of the room to grab something or to run to the restroom and comeback, he used to be there and used to turn off all the lights and fans. When I come back, everything is off...duh!
Not that I want to tell you a personal side of myself, just that I learned a lesson from him. He used to do it in order to cut down the electricity bill so that he could afford to pay it... (But in that act, he really helped in saving a lot of electricity, I guess his motive was dual-purpose and was known to him because he's a economist and thinks a lot about the country's economy too) so, more of it came to him as obligation than luxury. (Back in my home, having electricity is still one of the luxuries; a major portion of the population still lives without electricity). But looking at that situation, what I conclude that saving utilities like these is very much related to it's affordability. Because, more often than never, I end up hearing this: "I can afford it, so why should I bother about saving on it"
I learnt from him, not a way of saving money because I was not paying the bills, so, I really never bothered about the monetary side of it (and also that I can now afford to pay my own electricity bills), but when I see myself now with that habit, I'm happy because, think of it this way... even if you cut down on all the lights in your house a minute a day, you are saving 6 hours worth of electricity per year alone. Combine that with more people doing the same and the numbers increase drastically. So much so, that it gets equivalent to providing one house with free electricity with no extra production demands.
So, think about it. If you can afford it, does not mean that you can't save. You can. But as I said earlier, these things come with habits and habits are not easy to change.
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