Save Money--Five Tips for the Living Room

Save Money and Energy in the Living Room
Fireplace: Keep your fireplace damper closed unless a fire is going. An open damper can let 8 percent of the heat in your home escape. In the summer, cool air escapes. That can add up to about $100 a year-- up the chimney.
Junk Mail: Rid yourself of junk mail--or at least recycle it. The average U.S. household receives 1.5 trees' worth of junk mail each year, and many of these trees are thrown right into the trash. If you want to reduce the amount of junk mail you receive, you'll need to register with the Mail Preference Service. It costs a buck, but you can do it easily online at www.dmaconsumers.org/cgi/offmailinglist. For the junk mail you continue to receive, remember to toss it in the recycling bin instead of throwing it out with the garbage. You can even recycle plastic window envelopes. If all Americans recycled their junk mail, $370 million in landfill dumping fees could be saved each year.
Light Bulbs: Dust your light bulbs and change them-- to compact fluorescent--only when they burn out. You'll increase energy efficiency and light output, and because electricity production generates pollution, you'll also help promote cleaner air. If every American home changed out just five regular light fixtures or the bulbs in them with more energy-efficient compact fluorescent ones, we'd keep more than one trillion pounds of greenhouse gases out of the air --equal to the emissions of eight million cars. That's $6 billion in energy savings for Americans.
Matches vs. Lighters: When choosing between matches and lighters, choose matches. For lighters, both the plastic casing and the butane fuel are products made from petroleum, and since most lighters are disposable, over 1.5 billion each year end up in landfills or incinerators worldwide. And when choosing between a box of wood matches and a book of cardboard matches, choose the book. Wood matches come from trees, whereas most cardboard matches are made from recycled paper. If all of the cigarettes smoked every day around the world were to be lit with cardboard matches instead of wood matches, 5.5 million trees could be saved per year from going up in smoke.
Shades/Drapes: Close the curtains when it's sunny in the summer and when it's cold in the winter, and you could reduce your energy needs by up to 25 percent. If every house in America kept the curtains closed for additional insulation, the total energy saved annually would be as much as the entire nation of Japan uses in a year.
Hope these hints are useful. They come from "the green book". Buy the green book. Read the green book. Go to www.readthegreenbook.com .
Happy Savings!!!