Goderich

Making the Greener Choice!

This page provides helpful information to assist you in reducing your impact on the environment, with the following topics:

Standby Power
Recycling Facts
Anti-Idling Facts
Lawn Care
EcoLogo Program

Is Your Home Wasting Watts?

Many of our home appliances and other electrical products continue to draw power even after they're turned off. In fact, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, this "standby power" accounts for an estimated 8 percent of U.S. household electricity use. The average household tab for that comes to roughly $80 per year. Here's how to identify products in your home that may be drawing standby power, and some practical tips for reducing it.

What You Can Do

First, use the table below to identify which products in your home are drawing standby power and how much energy (and money) you stand to save by reducing it:

Look for	Examples	Power used in Standby mode	Potential energy use per year*	Potential cost per year*
External power supply (the black boxes that plug into a wall outlet)	Cell phone chargers, computer peripherals	3 to 10 watts	18 to 58 kilowatt hours	$1.77 to $5.73
Built-in rechargeable batteries	Cordless telephones	3 to 10 watts	18 to 58 kilowatt hours	$1.77 to $5.73
Remote control devises	TVs, VCRs, ceiling fans, audio equipment	5 to 25 watts	29 to 146 kilowatt hours	$2.84 to $14.32
Continuous digital displays	Clothes washers, microwave ovens, VCRs, TV set-top boxes	10 to 25 watts	58 to 146 kilowatt hours	$5.69 to $14.32
Products that feel warm even turned off	DVRs, TV set-top boxes	10 to 30 watts	58 to 175 kilowatt hours	$5.69 to $17.19
Products you may leave on when unneeded	Accent lighting, fans, computer printers and scanners	5 to 50 watts	29 to 292 kilowatt hours	$2.84 to $28.65

*assuming device is in standby mode for 16 hours each day

For great energy conservation tips visit: www.goderichhydro.ca

10 Easy Ways to Reduce Your CO₂ Footprint

The average American produces over 100 pounds of carbon dioxide per day (The average footprint for people in Canada is 20 tonnes per year or 120lbs per day)! We don't all have money on hand for the newest appliances or a hybrid car, so here are a few things you can do to lend the planet a hand without spending much time or money:

Put a lid on it! If you're heating something on the stove, put a lid over your pot or pan. Boiling water with in a covered pot takes much less time and saves energy too. Also make sure that the pot fits the burner snugly so energy in the form of heat does not escape out around the edges.
Inflate those tires. Properly inflated tires not only prevent wear and tear on the tires themselves, but they also give your car a couple of extra miles per gallon of gasoline.
Bring your own grocery bags. Every time you go to the store, paper and plastic bags are manufactured and disposed of for your convenience. Reuse the bags from your last trip or get some canvas ones for long term use.
Save water. The water that comes out of your faucet has been filtered, cleaned, pumped, and sometimes heated — all energy intensive processes that shouldn't be taken for granted. Save some water and help save the atmosphere too.
Get a compact fluorescent bulb. These cost a bit more when you buy them, but the energy savings make up for it quickly. The bulbs also last much longer than regular incandescent, so you'll spare yourself a few trips to the store.
Cold water laundry. One of the biggest energy drains in your washing machine is the heat it takes to warm the water. Unless your clothes are terribly soiled, wash your threads on the cold setting — the savings will show on your energy bill.
Plant a tree. Trees breathe in CO₂ and breathe out O₂. They store the carbon in their tissues, where it can't contribute to global warming.
Grab a sweater or open the window. Heating and air conditioning are one of the biggest energy users in a typical home. Turn your thermostat up a few degrees in the summer and down a few degrees in the winter to make a big dent in carbon dioxide conservation. Even just one or two degrees makes an impact.
Change your computer settings. We all know that keeping the computer on can be convenient, but if you're leaving work or going to bed for the night, shut down those energy drainers. For daytime use, set the computer to hibernate after it's been idle for a few minutes.
Share! Do you really need your very own lawn mower? Wrench set? Wireless router? Get to know your neighbors and set up a sharing system. Your wallet will thank you, and so will the planet.

Why Should We Recycle?

Most of us are familiar with the three R's of environmental responsibility. Reduce, reuse and the last, but not least important?recycle. We know recycling is good for the environment, but why? How does it help? Read on!

Protect the environment: Discarded products like scrap tires and end-of-use TVs and computers pose a number of risks to the health of our environment. As well, making products from recycled materials creates less air pollution and water pollution than making products from raw materials. By recycling we reduce the need to dig up or mine new raw materials, which disturbs and often damages the environment.
Save natural resources: Most of what we throw away is made from materials that are becoming scarce or are difficult to replace to meet our needs. By making products from recycled materials instead of raw materials, we conserve land and reduce the need to dig up precious natural resources.
Conserve energy: It generally takes less energy to make recycled products, than new products. For example, making new aluminum cans from recycled material uses dramatically less energy than making them from raw material.
Save landfill space: Simply put, when the materials you recycle are used to make new products they don't take up valuable landfill space. Albertans have saved millions of tax dollars by diverting old scrap tires and discarded TVs and computers from landfills.
Create jobs: The recycling process creates jobs. People are needed to run the machines that break down separate the various components of tires and electronics into parts that can be reused and turned into new products. In fact, Alberta's tire recycling industry employs hundreds of Albertans and now exports new recycled rubber products around the world.

Did You Know?

Enough energy is saved by recycling one aluminum can to run a TV set for three hours or to light one 100 watt bulb for 20 hours.
You can make 20 cans out of recycled material with the same amount of energy it takes to make one new one.
Five recycled 2 Litre plastic bottles make enough fibre fill to stuff a ski jacket.
Recycling one glass bottle in the making of a new glass container saves enough energy to keep a 100-watt light bulb illuminated for four hours.
Aluminum cans can be recycled over and over again. Glass never wears out — it can be recycled over and over again.
Making paper from recycled material uses 60% less energy than making virgin paper.
Making new steel products from recycled steel instead of virgin ore reduces water use by 40%, water pollution by 76%, air pollution by 86%, and mining wastes by 97%.
One ton of recycled paper saves 3,700 pounds of lumber and 24,000 gallons of water.
Recycling all of your home's waste newsprint, cardboard, glass, and metal can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 850 pounds a year.

Idling

On average, every Canadian produces over five tonnes of GHG emissions each year just by going his/her daily activities. For every litre of gasoline used, the average car produces about 2.4 kilograms of carbon dioxide (CO₂), the principal greenhouse gas. But we can avoid producing unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by reducing or eliminating wasteful vehicle idling.
3% of Ontario's fuel is wasted by idling
An idling gas engine burns 3.5 litres an hour
10 seconds of idling uses more fuel than restarting your car
$1.8 million of fuel is wasted every day in Canada by idling
An idling engine creates twice as much exhaust emissions as engine in motion.
Engine idling produces 8 million kilograms of GHG emissions per day.
Health Canada estimates that more than 5,000 Canadians die prematurely each year because of air pollution, and thousands more become unnecessarily ill. Children are particularly vulnerable to air pollution because they breathe faster than adults and inhale more air per kilogram of body weight. Air pollution also causes unnecessary difficulty for elderly people and those with respiratory problems, such as asthma, emphysema and chronic bronchitis.
An idling engine is not operating at its peak temperature, which means fuel combustion is incomplete. Soot deposits can accumulate on the cylinder walls leading to oil contamination and damaged components. Idling will warm up your engine, but it does not warm your wheel bearings, steering, transmission and tires. Only driving does this!
Today's modern engines require no more than 30 seconds of idling at start-up, even on winter days. If you worried about your engine on cool winter days use a block heater to warm the engine.
Depending on the price of gas, you can save $100 per year just by turning off your engine. If a vehicle idles 10 minutes a day it can use more then 100 litres of gasoline in a year.

Beautiful Lawns & Gardens Naturally

Learn more about grasscycling

EcoLogo Program

Certified Green Products | Participating Companies | See Our Criteria

EcoLogo is North America's most widely recognized and respected certification of environmental leadership. By setting standards and certifying products in more than 120 categories, EcoLogo helps you identify, trust, buy, and sell environmentally preferable ("green") goods and services.

Launch ed by the Canadian federal government in 1988, EcoLogo has grown to serve buyers and sellers of green products throughout the United States and Canada, and around the world. In fact, EcoLogo is North America's oldest environmental standard and certification organization (and the second oldest in the world). It is the only North American standard accredited by the Global Ecolabeling Network as meeting the international ISO 14024 standard for environmental labels.