A Little Knowledge for Making the Most Sustainable Choices at Home and in the Office

How many gallons of waster does the average person use during a shower?  Should you turn the computer monitor off every time you leave the computer?  How long does it take a plastic sandwich bag to decompose?

Below are some useful facts for making simple changes that will go a long way for the environment.  This Earth Day week, start making these actions habits and reduce your environmental footprint for a lifetime.

1) Turn off the monitor if you’re not going to use the PC for more than 20 minutes, and the CPU and the monitor if you’re not going to use your PC for more than two hours.  There is a small surge when your computer starts up, but this surge is generally smaller than the energy used when a computer is running for long periods of time, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s energy saving tips.  PCs also produce heat, so turning them off reduces a building’s cooling loads.

2) The average U.S. household spends $100 per year to power devices while they are off.  Standby power accounts for more than 100 billion kilowatt hours of annual U.S. electricity consumption and more than $10 billion in annual energy costs, on a national basis.  Consider a color-coded strip surge protector from EcoGreenOffice.

3) Installing a low-flow showerhead that uses 2.5 gallons per minute or less can save you up to 70 percent on your water bill.  The average shower consumes 17.2 gallons, lasting over 8 minutes at a flow rate of 2.2 gallons per minute.  However, older showerheads can use as much as 6.5 gallons of water per minute! 

4) Collect excess shower water in a bucket and use it to water plants.  You’ll also be reducing the water used to keep your flora growing.

5) Before shopping for a completely new spring wardrobe consider this: a T-shirt takes 400 gallons of water to create, from cotton ball to store shelf, and a pair of jeans takes 1,800 gallons of water.   

6) It does make a difference to forgo the one-use and / or non-biodegradable materials.  When exposed to light and air, it can take an aluminum soda can 350 years to decompose and a plastic sandwich bag 400 years.  A Polystyrene foam cup and glass bottle may never decompose. 

If you need to go with disposables, check out compostable options from EcoGreenOffice.

Simple and creative changes in your life can go a long way for the environment, like catching shower water in a bucket for watering plants.