Why going green won't make you better

[OhioTom76]

I won't shop at Whole Foods due to the comments from the CEO regarding minimum wage and health care coverage. He is a greedy fool who has clearly been proven wrong by other businesses such as Costco who do pay their workers fair living wages. Whole Foods is an overpriced grocery store for privileged rich white people to walk around and feel good about themselves in. There is nothing remarkable about the quality of their food, it's just that a majority of it simply carries a much higher price tag. One of the last times I was in one, it was a friday evening and they had some goofball live band in the store playing jazz music. Really? Is this why I'm paying ridiculous prices to shop here, for this crap?

[David]

I will never give up my natural gas range, cooking is awesome and way better than electric can ever be.

Pasta does boil over but should be easy to control and Rice cook it in a proper rice cooker.

[regfootball]

showed that of 500 people who had greened their homes, a third saw no reduction in bills.

I know that on this point, I haven't really seen any reduction in my bills, but I have seen a reduction in my kWh used. I'm a stickler for not leaving lights on even though my whole house is CFL.

Unfortunately, the price has increased for me over the years.

I did the useless exercise of putting CFL's throughout my house about 4-5 years ago. Here is what i found.

-electric bill did not go down, in fact it's gone up (but that's probably in part to mandated renewable energy standards in this state which are shown that such states consumers pay about 30% more for their electricity than the states that do not have mandates).

-it costs a lot for those bulbs, and they do not last 7 years. Many of them pop after 4-6 months.

-Break one and now I have mercury in my house.

-Fairly useless as exterior lights or in the garage (but I have them in there anyways)

The quality of CFL's has improved. The thing I do like about CFL's is they do not heat up.

I get a kick out of all the present rage...the non GMO, down with Monsanto, i shop at whole foods crowd. They want to go back to growing food in their backyard. Good luck with that. The mechanization of ag is a major reason why the USA is the USA and not a third world state. There is a middle ground, we shouldn't poison our people. But there is a lot of loss of perspective on the whole food chain disdain going on right now.

[Drew Dowdell]

You have to look at your kwh usage rather than your dollar spend. If your kwh went down the sticking with incandescent would have cost you even more.

My cfls seem to last forever, there are some in my house that have been installed for over 7 years, they haven't been changed since before Albert and I got together.

[Intrepidation]

My house runs on coal and diced lions.

[David]

My house is almost all LED now and I love it since most of my lighting has been changed to be indirect daylight equal so it is nice and bright and yet easy on the eyes. I have noticed my usage has gone down though the power company has raised rates so I am pretty much breaking even. Yet if I was still on the old lights, I would have seen a large increase in cost.

[Drew Dowdell]

In states where it is available, you should shop around for better energy rates.

[David]

Wish I could but Washington state has PSE for western washington and Avista for eastern washington and the gov sets the rates. No competition allowed or available. The only other option is to add Solar to my roof as the state has a mandate that the local power company has to buy back any unused power and I could put up enough panels to power my needs so it would be almost zero cost except for the roughly $15K it would cost to purchase and install it. Some time down the road once the wife graduates college.

[regfootball]

In states where it is available, you should shop around for better energy rates.

how does one get that choice? I'm stuck with a municipal utility for electric and water. I only have one cable provider choice. Likewise, natural gas.

No choice, no competition, equals stick it to the man.

[Drew Dowdell]

Live in a blue state or Texas.

[David]

Tried living in Texas but after one year had to flee due to the racist nature of that state. Hard having a Korean wife and kids in a state that believes white is superior. Nice place to visit as they are friendly as long as you do not move there and have great barbeque food but otherwise narrow minded as they come.

[OhioTom76]

Cook more carefully?

Have you ever cooked rice or pasta? It boils over. That's just what it does. One second it's fine, the next starch bubbles are everywhere because it erupted like Old Faithful.

My main issue with electric is that if you are doing any kind of frying or stir-frying, electric isn't powerful to protect against temperature drops when you add ingredients. Thing is, especially with stir-frying, everything should cook rapidly and not absorb much oil; if you use gas, you still need plenty of BTUs to keep the wok temp up when you add your ingredients so it cooks quickly...otherwise, temps drop, food doesn't cook quickly, and it absorbs a ton of oil. Gross. Even my parents' gas stove couldn't keep up with stir-frying room-temp, sliced veggies properly; once we built the outdoor kitchen and opted for two very powerful side burners with the grill, our equipment was finally sufficient to do any kind of stir-frying.

It helps to use a flat bottom stir fry skillet on a conventional stove, instead of a traditional Wok. They get hotter because more of the pan is touching the actual heat source. I've tried regular woks, even with the ring attachment, and they would never get hot enough because the pan was mostly up off of the heat source.

[rosa]

I really don't go green in an extreme way. However, I try to because it is the right thing to do. It is important to keep the air that we breath clean as it enhances life, not to mention what we put in our bodies. Going green is a healthy habit that we all need to practice.

[Drew Dowdell]

I'm getting 22.9 mpg out of a Ram 1500 Hemi this week...