It's not Easy Being Green

Gun’s Quote-of-the-Week:

“I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security.  Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad.  Otherwise what is there to defend?”

-Robert Redford

This week I was supposed to have my first sustainability committee meeting for the American Society of Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning Engineers
(ASHRAE) Instead, one of the community members got sick and the other I apparently was in the same restaurant with and couldn’t find. The one committee member who I did run into briefly talked with me. We discussed some ideas, but beings that only half of the committee discussed business, our meeting was quite short.

This is after finding only three other people out of an organization of hundreds that were interested in starting a sustainability committee in the first place.

I also learned that one of my projects this week is not going to utilize heat pumps on the project. A heat pump for this particular building would literally reduce the amount of energy needed for heating the building by less than half. The heat pumps were eliminated due to budget constraints. The alternative? Electric strip heat. For those not aware, it is the most inefficient way to heat a building, at least in Kansas.

I also spent a decent amount of money on the most efficient dishwasher I could find in my price range a few weeks ago. The new dishwasher uses only a few gallons of water per dishwasher full of dishes. That and new technologies in motor design mean that it actually uses less total energy than washing dishes by hand. (And almost 80% less water than washing dishes by hand.) How can an electrically-powered dishwasher use less energy than hand-washing dishes? Simple. Because it uses so much less water, that’s less water your house has to heat. Because your house doesn’t heat as much water, it doesn’t use as much energy.

Try explaining this to the various occupants of my house who run a sink-full of water to rinse the dishes off before the go in the dishwasher in the first place. (Or wash them by hand altogether)

Certainly, I’m not meaning to complain for help in the kitchen, but I’m frustrated at the general lack of mankind’s’ desire to change habits and form new ones for the greater good of us all. Instead of considering what our future generations might inherit – or consider how even in our own lifetimes we may be impacted by the decisions we choose to make today – we instead look immediately for what is less work, more familiar or cheaper. That people insist on running their heat all day long so they come home to a warm house when a $100 programmable thermostat would do the same thing is most infuriating to me.

While not wanting to lecture and simultaneously not wanting to go political on you, I would just ask that you carefully consider ALL of your resources. Money is an important resource, true, but if we all took basic steps to reduce the impact we had on the world around us, all of us would enjoy a higher quality of life.

So would our decedents.

…and that’s why it’s a Gun’s Quote!