Ben Brockhaus' Blog

I was brought up with an understanding of how important protecting our environment is. After attending college, and seeing how so many people live, I’m not so sure that most people feel the same way as me. I tend to worry about things like tearing the plastic off of my junk mail envelopes and recycling the rest, rinsing out plastic containers and recycling them, not littering, not putting harmful chemicals down the drain, protecting wild salmon runs and endangered species, global warming, not driving gas-guzzling SUVs, turning off lights when I’m gone, alternative energy and things like that.

But evidently for some people, it’s too much effort to rinse out a can and recycle it. It bothers me immensely. So here are 5 easy ways to be friendly to the planet. They won’t take too much of your precious time, and will make a big difference in the end.

1.) Don’t leave water running! While you’re brushing your teeth, washing dishes, washing your car or whatever, wash, rinse, turn off the water and repeat. There’s no need to waste water.

2.) Set your home on energy-conserving schedules. X10’s ActiveHome software is an easy way to schedule your indoor and outdoor lights to come on and off automatically and save energy, as well as lengthen the life of your light bulbs!

3.) Don’t leave the heat on while you’re away! Turn off the heat when you’re gone, and turn it down at night. With X10’s Thermostat Set-Back Controller, you can even set your house to heat up or cool down before you get home from work. You’ll be amazed on how much this will cut back your electric or gas bill!

4.) Buy Energy-Efficient Products! Do you really need a monster truck that gets 8 miles to the gallon. If everyone drove one of those things, the Earth would be out of oil in the blink of an eye. Also, you can now buy energy-efficient light bulbs that use far less energy that the ones you probably use now!

5.) Recycle!Is it really that hard to rip the plastic off your envelopes, rinse out containers and put newspapers in the right bins? Stop putting them in the trash!