Dreaming of a Green Christmas: tips for greening up your holidays
Cold weather, colorful lights, visits from family and friends, and the aroma of sweet confections in the oven. These things can only mean one inevitable yearly occurrence: skyrocketing energy bills. Oh yeah, and the holidays.
With energy prices reaching record highs this year and the environmental crisis that has everyone checking their carbon footprints, it’s impossible not to worry about what number will appear on your monthly gas and electric bills when the weather starts to get chilly.
Thankfully, there are some practical and low-cost ways to keep those bills from cutting into more important expenses, such as gifts, gingerbread and knitted sweaters.
Lights and other Decorations
- Decorative lights use a good amount of energy, but that doesn’t mean you have to scrap them altogether. Use LED Christmas lights, which are smaller and use 90% less electricity than regular Christmas lights.
- To save even more energy, be sure to wait until dark to turn on your Christmas lights; then, turn them off before you go to bed. Do you have trouble remembering to turn your lights on and off? Then set a timer, and forget about it.
- Try out a cool, fiber optic tree this year. Fiber optic trees have lights that come from a single source, piping light down through a fiber optic cable. This cuts energy use significantly, and you can still enjoy a beautifully lit tree.
Entertaining Family and Guests
- Guests can be useful, and not just to wash dishes for you. Some heater use is inevitable, but extra bodies in the house mean that you can usually lower the thermostat.
- Rather than driving through the neighborhood to see the Christmas lights, grab a coat and take a walk with your friends and family. This is a festive and fun, yet green activity that requires no gas, is good for the environment and a good way to burn off those holiday calories.
In the Kitchen
- A full refrigerator and freezer can be energy efficient because the cold items help keep the temperature inside the fridge or freezer low after the door is opened. However, an overstuffed freezer or fridge will guzzle more energy trying to keep foods cold because air is unable to circulate.
- There is no need to preheat the oven when cooking ham or turkey, since they usually cook at a snail’s pace anyway.
- Use the energy-saving cycles on dishwashers. Machines that have air power or overnight dry settings can save up to 10 percent of dishwashing energy costs.
Saving energy during the holidays is a great way to cut costs not only during the winter season, but it’s a good way to get your family to practice energy-efficient habits all year long. Keep the ball rolling and make a New Year’s resolution to save energy in 2009!
Have any other tips? Share by posting in the comments below.
Written by Tom Debin
Tom Debin is the CEO of Equity Thru Energy, an energy management firm that helps businesses save money on energy bills through innovative technology that monitors energy use and prevents energy waste.
He is a board member and past president of the California Solar Energy Industries Association (CALSEIA), and has always been passionate about the business of wise energy use. Tom has recently launched his own blog, Worth the Energy, where he hopes to share his knowledge and passion for energy savings and the environment.
Article photo by kevindoooley
Related article:
- Seven, stupid, simple ways to be green and save green
3 Responses to “Dreaming of a Green Christmas: tips for greening up your holidays”
Leave a Reply
Please keep your comments positive and respectful. All others will be deleted.
Thanks for this great article Tom! Really simple and easy and cheap tips. And it’s not just for Christmas. Any holidays that you celebrate in the next few weeks can benefit from these.
-Andrew
[...] are supposed to be a time for joy, higher energy bills can cause a lot of grief. Check out this article that I wrote on saving energy during the holidays for some inexpensive, practical tips on [...]
[...] year’s, new year’s eve 2008, planet green trackback I recently wrote an article that was posted on Lyved.com about saving energy during the holidays, but all of this planning for 2009 that I am doing both [...]