Earth Hour 2013 - Join me!

Get ready to flip the switch. We're counting down to Earth Hour!

In case you haven't noticed the clock and logo in my sidebar, Earth Hour 2013 is Saturday, March 23, 8:30 p.m. your local time. And for those of you joining us for the first time, Earth Hour is a worldwide awareness event during which participants unplug all nonessential appliances and turn off all the lights for one hour. It is cool, it is fun, and yes, it is real. In fact, it has become huge.

The team of people behind this wonderfully dark demonstration have been posting some interesting news and ideas on their Earth Hour Blog. Here's just a glimpse of the topics:

• Did you know that some hotels and casinos have been taking Earth Hour beyond the hour by extinguishing some of their lights for one hour every month? While it's primarily a symbolic gesture, it does have the practical application of a slight reduction in energy usage, and even a tiny decrease is better than an increase. I mean, you've seen how well-lit casinos are.

• Meanwhile, chefs all over the world are making an all-around green event out of Earth Hour. Restaurant patrons can dine on sustainable food items during the candlelit meal, while home cooks can try out some Earth Hour recipes created by their favorite celebrity chefs.

• Kids tend to latch onto an idea and become some of the most passionate activists, don't they? Some youngsters are doing some pretty cool things, extending Earth Hour into broader environmental campaigns.

What do I love about Earth Hour?

It's so visual. When you can see your city's landmarks go dim, suddenly the night sky is clearer, and so is the message.

It's impactful. If one hour of lights out can make a measurable difference, just imagine the difference we could all make by being just a little more mindful of what we could unplug every day.

But most of all, it's so easy! Just turn off all of your lights and—I feel like I have to throw this in every year—unplug your dang phone charger!

I will if you will. And I will, so...

Earth Hour This Saturday - No Excuses!

The most common excuse I hear for not participating in Earth Hour is, "Well, I would, but I'm not going to be home."  Please.  Being home is a better excuse for not participating, because maybe you need the lights on to do whatever it is you're doing!  Don't tell me you can't turn off all the lights and unplug all non-essentials because you won't be home.  Don't you get it?  You won't be home.  You won't be using any of the electricity in your house (except for the fridge and other large appliances that can't be unplugged easily, yes, I know).

Earth Hour 2012 is this Saturday, March 31

8:30 - 9:30 p.m. your local time

Being away from home during Earth Hour is instead the perfect excuse to reduce your electricity usage for even longer than one hour.  Here's what you do; it's very simple.  Before you leave the house, unplug your TV, DVD player, cable box, gaming system, whatever.  Unplug your computer.  Or, flip the switch on the power strip supplying current to all of these things.

Unplug your microwave, your coffee maker, any other small kitchen appliances that are just sitting there sipping at your electric current while not actually providing you with any food or drink.  Shut off your heater or air conditioner.  It's not August, and it's not January; the climate inside your house will not change dramatically over the course of one night without climate control.

Unplug your clock radios, electric toothbrushes and other small everyday items that, again, you will not be using while you are not at home this evening.  Is there a phone charger plugged into your wall right now?  Is it presently charging a phone?  No, because you're taking your phone with you while you are not at home.  Unplug that charger!  It's doing nothing but sucking energy.

And last, before you finally walk out the door, make sure all your lights are turned off.  Outdoor lights, too, people.  If you're that concerned about darkness-induced robbery, take your heirloom jewelry with you for this one evening.

And then go out, enjoy your time away from home, and still participate in Earth Hour!  Maybe you'll even be lucky enough to visit a participating restaurant downtown, where you'll dine by candlelight as you watch the skyline go dark for an hour.  You don't get that experience every Saturday night.

And so you have to reset a few clocks when you return.  Big deal.  Cry me a river.  Just do it in the dark.

How It All Began
Earth Hour History
Our Earth Hour 2010
... And the 2010 global report

Beyond the Day

How ironic that, in the last few weeks, it was on Earth Day and its weekend that we used our car the most.  It was that darn rain that shouldn’t have kept me off the bicycle but did (I’m not being so wimpy about the wet and wild weather this week) and various family Easter gatherings that led to more than 150 miles of driving.  Yeesh.  And gas prices were nearing $4.30 in our neck of the woods and even higher near the city.

But, one good thing that came from all that fuel-burning (besides all the food we ate and the quality time spent with loved ones, of course) was that we passed a billboard for Earth Hour.  Remember that?  It was in March.  I told you to participate.  The billboard said, “This Earth Hour, go beyond the hour.” That means regularly unplugging your electronics when you’re not using them.  Turning off the lights when you leave a room (like, duh).

We’ve been unplugging our TV, digital converter, and DVD player, which are conveniently connected to one power strip, as well as our amplified antenna (rabbit ears you can plug in to boost their reception), before we go to bed at night and just anytime we’re not watching a show.  We also unplug the microwave and coffee maker whenever they are not actively heating or brewing something for us.  It means when we do use them, they don’t display the right time, but how many digital clocks do we need in the kitchen, anyway?  And, of course, of course, if we’re not charging the cell phones, the chargers are not plugged in!  Yes, the chargers suck energy even when they’re not charging something.

A fun experiment is to watch your electric meter outside and see how the speed of the numbers rolling along changes when you run (or don’t run) certain things in the house.  Len was watching ours slowly count our kilowatts when it spun a little faster for a few seconds.  “What just happened?” he asked. “What did you change?”  It was our fridge cycling on.  Interesting.  Well, interesting for nerds like us.

So that’s taking Earth Hour beyond the hour.  What about taking Earth Day beyond the day?  Lots of people already are.  Lots people still need to.  And, what that means to each person is different.  Maybe organic gardening, public transportation, rain barrels, eating only local produce.  

For us, it means the trash can is a last resort, it means bicycling in the rain so we don’t have to use the car, it means stirring the compost more frequently in anticipation of a vegetable garden, and it means hanging the laundry out to dry...just as soon as it warms up and stops raining.  It could mean more, though.  Water conservation, to name one category, is something we need to work on.  We're not complete water gluttons, taking 30-minute showers, watering a vast lawn twice day, but it's an area in need of improvement.  Future post?

What does it mean to you to take Earth Day beyond the day?  What more could it mean to you?

Daylight Saving Time is Fuel-Saving Time

. . . And, we're back.

As bicycling ninjas.

Since we have more daylight left in the evening—even if it doesn't necessarily come with warmer temperatures—our commutes to and from work and school were 100% car-free last week!  This week begins another five consecutive days (pending the thunderstorm forecast) of bicycle commuting.

And, I want to remind everyone of Earth Hour next Saturday night.  Do it!  No excuses!  The food in your fridge will not spoil if you cut the power for just one hour. (This is assuming you are not leaving the fridge door wide open for the duration of the hour, of course.)

Related posts:
Don't Forget Earth Hour Tonight! (Earth Hour 2010)
First Bicycle Commute of 2010

Don't Forget Earth Hour Tonight!

Tonight at 8:30 p.m. your local time, turn off all of your lights and unplug all of your nonessential appliances. Unplug your coffee pot, microwave, TV, DVD player, sound system. Charging your cell phone or iPod? Unplug 'em for this hour. Unplug everything you can. Go off the grid until 9:30!

So what do you do in the dark for an hour, especially if you're in a cold climate like us? If you live in a city, especially near a downtown area with lots of skyscrapers, go outside. It could be really cool to see your city's landmark buildings go dark for this simple, hour-long call to action on global climate change. Last year's news coverage had great photos of places like Paris, New York, Chicago and Las Vegas dimming their normally well-lit recognizable buildings. It was moving.

Live in the country? Go outside and watch the sky.

Don't want to go outside? Maybe a candlelit dinner is for you. Or flashlight tag. Or snuggling under a blanket. I'm sure you can think of something.

For more information about Earth Hour, go to www.earthhour.org.

Doubling the Effort for Half the Energy

Our electric bill has been a little higher than we'd like the past few months.  Sure, you have to factor in the Christmas lights we hung (and only lit about five times) and the fact that winter's fewer daylight hours mean the indoor lighting comes on earlier and stays on longer.  But I don't think that's all.  According to our latest ComEd bill, we used 296 kilowatt hours this January.  Last month, 301 kWh.  Compare that to 244 and 222 kWh in December 2010 and January 2011, respectively.  We've using more electricity (shame on us), and I'll tell you why.

Inspired by Earth Hour, when you go dark for one hour by unplugging everything in your house, we had been regularly unplugging the nonessentials whenever we weren't using them.  Coffee maker, microwave, any other small kitchen appliances, TV, DVD, digital box, antenna (it plugs in for amplified receiving strength).  When we left the house for the day, when we went to bed, when we simply weren't watching TV.  And, of course, turning off the lights when we left a room.  This discipline lasted for a long while.  And then life got busy -- Len's school schedule became fuller, we made more frequent whirlwind weekend trips to visit my family, and I don't know what else -- and we were exhausted.  Combine that with darker, colder days, which drain all motivation, and we were consequently lazy when it came to conserving resources.  Also, due to Len's course load, our home computer has been on more often (for him), and our TV has been on more often (for me).

Anyway, now I am going to renew our commitment to reducing our electricity usage.  And my goal is to halve our usage.  That's right.  I know we can do it, too, because in April, May, and June 2011, our kWh usage ranged from 146 to 153.  We've used only half of what we're using now, and we will use that little again.

Related Posts:
Beyond the Day
The Earth Hour 2010 Report

The Earth Hour 2010 Report

Earth Hour 2010 was the largest public demonstration in history, according to a press release by the World Wildlife Fund:

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4,000 cities
in 125 countries
including all 50 states
and Washington, D.C.

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In northern Illinois, ComEd registered a decline in electricity usage of about 1 percent during the 8:30-9:30 period. One percent doesn't seem like a big number (and of course it could be bigger, which would be awesome), but it is a noticeable difference: the equivalent of removing 124,320 pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, or planting 15 acres of trees. Nice work, people. Let's shoot for an even higher percent next year!

I encourage you to read some of the accounts from cities around the world on EarthHour.org's news page. The site also has some really neat photos and videos of the event.

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Here's just a sampling of Before-And-After photos:

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St. Louis Arch, MO, USA ©WWF/Steve Behrends

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Chicago Theater, IL, USA ©WWF/Chuck Osgood
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Burj Al Arab, Dubai, UAE ©Jumeirah Group

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View of Central Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong ©WWF/HKPPA .

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Tower Bridge, London, UK ©WWF/Jon Freeman

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Candlelit coffee (illuminated by battery-powered headlamp)

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Yes, that last one is ours. Len realized he needed to reheat his cup of coffee after everything was already unplugged. Setting a pillar candle inside a jug of similar diameter and balancing his mug on a cookie-cooling rack, he made use of the flame. It worked, but it also was quite precarious (as if you couldn't tell), and some coffee spilled on the carpet. Yeah, we cleaned it up by candlelight too, but not without the help of our awesome LED headlamps.

Incongruous

I'm biking in January—in northern Illinois!—without gloves or ear coverings, and I'm even a little too warm wearing two shirts.  And yet, it's still too dark to ride without lights.  There are still piles of snow that haven't melted at the corners of every intersection—usually blocking the edge of the sidewalk, meaning I must dismount and hoist my bike over.  Pedaling home at 6:30 this evening felt more like riding around at 9:00 on a late spring night.  Except for those snow piles, of course.

So strange to have gone from bitter cold and seven inches of snow so quickly to this unseasonably mild weather.  But I'll take it.  Saving gas, getting exercise, right?  Besides general laziness, the cold is what keeps us off our bikes and in the car.  It's why we put on our winter weight.  So, I'll take it while I have it.  I'm sure we'll snap back into the typical Chicago winter soon.

In the meantime, I'll try to post a little more frequently.  And post something a little more interesting than one 25-minute bike commute.  It's just that... well, I'm sure you've noticed how our posts taper off in late summer as harvest time hits (as if we were big crop farmers), something that has gotten worse every year in the three years we've been blogging.  So, I'm going to make an effort.  After all, I need to catch your attention with regular posts before I can even hope for you to notice my annual reminder to participate in Earth Hour (March 31).

Just dandy - a lawn that's greenish

Feast your eyes. This is what organic lawn maintenance looks like.

Hundreds and hundreds of dandelions (and other weeds for which I don't have names but know I don't want taking over my yard), pulled out by the roots. This is just one hour's work in one afternoon. There have been several afternoons spent before it, and I even did 15 minutes of rapid weeding yesterday morning before logging on to my day job.

These hours of hand-wrenching, back-aching work are what you have to look forward to if you want to maintain your lawn in an organic, earth-friendly, chemical-free way. That is, if you're trying to maintain the typical neighborhood's green-grass lawn on a lot that was not so well-maintained in the years before you owned it. We're nursing our suburban fescue back to life.

This endless toiling is a big reason why most eco-friendly lawn options involve natural landscapes of native plantings. 

Here's an example from a neighbor's house.

It doesn't look like much right now, but then, the Illinois prairies are only just awakening from winter dormancy. In the summer, tall grasses and wildflowers fill out the little homegrown preserve here. It's pretty and requires far less watering than a short-grass lawn.

We're keeping most of our open lawn, though, because we like to get out on it to play yard games. I like to keep our lawn and garden as green as possible, and I don't just mean the color of the grass. We moved our compost bin and its contents with us, when we moved houses last spring, so you better believe I'll be using our compost to fertilize the lawn. Our lawn mower is a good, old-fashioned (but brand new from Home Depot) reel mower, and our weed whacker is battery powered.

But, we've never been 100% green. We balance being green with some convenient shortcuts, because not everyone can be a full-time homesteader. So, in our garage, there's a stinky little bag of organic chicken manure from a local garden center, and there's also a bag of very non-organic "weed and feed" from my grandma's garden supplies. I'll pull as many weeds by hand as I can, and I'll even ignore a few of them, but I might pull out the weed killer spray at some point for a targeted assault. We'll use water collected in our rain barrels as much as possible for watering the grass seed when we sow later this spring, but I know we will sometimes just use the hose straight from the house, because going back and forth with the watering can is a huge time commitment.

All that is ahead of us yet. For now, I'm diligently scouring the yard with the forked precision weeding tool, a.k.a the "pokey dandelion thingy."

I'm letting most of those piles of pulled dandelions dry out, and then I'll toss them into the compost bin. But, yes, we did eat a handful.

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