Day 5 of green watching. It ain’t easy. Thank God, for the startling noise of the fan yesterday. That, I did notice.
Through this green watching exercise, I am realizing the difficulty of noticing even when one consumes energy. Again, this is a problem I had encountered during Daily Footprint Project. The car, the dryer, these are obvious ones that cannot not be noticed. But how about the silent fridge, the TV, the computer, the electric toothbrush, the microwave, the dishwasher? All the appliances that tend to be turned on 24/7?
And even if I did notice, I’m not about to keep on running the house to plug and unplug those energy suckers. There’s got to be a way to have them turned off when not in use – with the exception of the fridge, of course! . . . After all, standby power, otherwise called vampire power, or phantom load, represents between 5 and 10% of home electricity use, and 1% of world co2 emissions.
La Marguerite 