It's about time!

At the Verizon location where I'm working these days, bikes are not allowed in the building, so it's fairly clear how many people bike to work by how many bikes are in the rack.

When I've biked in so far, about three-quarters of the time I've had the only bike in the rack of our garage, which serves about 600 people. The rest of the time there's been one other.

But on Tuesday, when I biked in, I was the third bike in the rack. Maybe we're getting somewhere.

How inefficient we are

We've been trying to make ourselves more energy efficient, especially over the past nine months, and we've cut our energy usage quite a bit in that time. We've replaced light bulbs and the refrigerator and the washing machine. Replacing the washing machine has helped the dryer do its job more quickly as well. The Colemans are better at turning off lights than they've ever been and just as bad at turning off the TV.

But while I was checking out the weather for my bike ride to work tomorrow (going for my eighth consecutive weekday without driving to work, even though it's just four and a half miles), a link on the Weather Channel Web site caught my eye.

Is your kitchen wasting energy? Find out with our 33-point checkup

Uhm, guess so. Some of the items we could stand to incorporate into our daily lives:

• If you're using the dishwasher, pre-rinse dishes with cold water. Be sure machine is full, but not overloaded. (Color me guilty on both counts.)
• Turn off automatic air-dry switch, and let dishes dry by air. If your machine doesn't have an air-dry switch, turn off the control knob after the final rinse and prop the door open a bit so the dishes will dry faster.
• It's cheaper to cook by microwave than by electric oven.
• When using the oven, try to reduce the number of times you open the door while cooking. Each time the door is opened, the stove loses about 1/4th of its heat. (This I know, but it's so hard to resist!)
• If you cook on an electric range, you can turn off the burners or the oven before the cooking is finished, because it will take several minutes for the burners to lose their heat. (Never occurred to me.)
  
• If your sink has a disposal unit, use cold water when operating. This saves energy used to heat the water, and is more effective at removing grease. Grease will solidify under cold water and become more easily ground up and washed away. You can give it a quick final rinse with hot water. (I think I usually do this but now I will make sure to always do it.)
• Vacuum the coils on the back of your refrigerator twice a year to maximize efficiency. (New fridge, doesn't need it now, but wish I'd done that before.)
• A new, more efficient refrigerator can typically save you $70-80 per year and will pay for itself in about nine years. Older models commonly use an annual average of over 1,700 kWh, while equivalent models now use fewer than 700 kWh. This can reduce your carbon-dioxide emissions by over 1,000 pounds a year. (Oh, definitely. The old fridge was probably 15-20 years old.)
  

It's too late to really know if these changes will have an effect here. But I found some of the suggestions interesting and thought I should pass them on.