Save Money--Save the World--4 Tips

Four More Tips

1. Food Waste. When cooking, try to avoid wasting food by using perishable ingredients before they spoil, measuring carefully, and saving leftovers for future meals instead of throwing them away. If you could reduce the amount of food wasted in your household by just twenty-five grams per day (about the weight of a slice of bread), you'd save twenty pounds of food annually--roughly enough to make sixteen meals. If all U.S. households reduced their food waste by this amount, the savings would be enough to provide three meals per day for a whole year to each of the 1.35 million children in the United States who are homeless.
   
2. Garbage Disposal.Use cold water when you run your garbage disposal. Better yet, try not to use it at all by composting your food waste or disposing of it in the trash. Your drain will be less clogged, possible saving you a future plumbing bill, and you'll save money on maintaining your septic system. Disposal waste can disrupt nutrient balances in water and soil ecosystems which in turn can harm wildlife.
   
3. Microwave. Keep your microwave clean and you'll maximize its energy. This means less electricity used, less money spent, and less time cooking. Microwaves are between 3.5 and 4.8 times more energy efficient than traditional electric ovens. If it costs ten cents to cook one item in a microwave, it would cost forty-eight cents to cook the same item in a standard oven. If everyone in North America cooked exclusively with a microwave for a year, we'd save as much energy as the entire continent of Africa consumes during that same time.
   
4. Preheating. If you're broiling, roasting, or baking a dish that will cook for an hour or more, don't bother preheating your oven. Even for breads, and cakes, never preheat for longer than ten minutes. If you reduce the amount of time your oven is on by one hour per year, you'll save an average of two kilowatt-hours of energy. If 30 percent of U.S. households could each reduced total oven preheating time by just one hour per year, the sixty million kilowatt-hours of energy saved could bake a dozen cookies for every American!
   

Hope these tips are helpful. And buy The Green Book! These hints are from it. And go to www.readthegreenbook.com

Personal note:

Did a little grocery shopping at Food Lion and Bilo's today. Went through both store's sales papers last night...matched coupons my wife had cut, of items we used with sales. That way you get the benefit of the sale along with the coupon discount. It came out like this.

Food Lion before savings: $14,06 minus coupon savings of $4.11 minus in store discounts of $2.31= Total cost: $7.64 percent savings 46%

Bilo before savings $39.57 minus coupon savings of $4.95 minus in store discounts of $9.13= Total cost:$25.49 percent savings 36%

Savings as of 1-9-08 $71,58

Savings today: $20.49

Savings year to date $92.07

Happy Savings!!