1. Whenever your leaving the room, even if its for about 2 minutes, switch off the electricals, lights, tvs, fans, etc.
2. While your ironing your clothes, dont keep switching the iron on and off as it pulls in more energy.
3. You can wash your own clothes individually instead of using the washing machine as it consumes energy as well as a loadful of water.
4. You can use CFL (compact fluorescent lights) bulbs or tube lights which comparatively consume less energy.
5. While your away from your computer, dont put it on screen saver mode as it wastes energy. Instead, put the monitor off or just switch of the computer.
6. If you have a water heater in your house, make sure that you switch it off at maximum 15 mins at which the water turns hot, as the longer you take to switch the heater off, the more amount of energy will you waste and the more you'll have to pay for your bill.
7. Nobody really knows this but if you keep your refrigerator and freezer packed full, the fridge works more effeciently, the food remains frozen and power or energy will be lost for an extended period of time.
8. Do FULL laundry. Put all the clothes in at once. Some families do partial loads of laundry in the washing machine which wastes more energy and water.
9. Instead of using a hot dryer to dry your clothes, one can buy a clothing rack and hang their clothes on it. It may take time to dry but if you hang them under a fan or in your backyard or lawn under the sun, your clothes become warm and they even smell nice cause of the sunlight lol srsly =D
10. Wash your dishes individually rather than using a dish washer. However, due to technology development, there are new dishwashers that use less than 5 gallons of water and are energy effecient :) Haha ok thats all i got. Its what i practice at home. If everyone does the same and does their little bit, it makes a huge difference, trust me. :) haha have fun! go green!
Other ways to save energy...
Utilize a fan when you run your AC - it pushes the air around so you feel cooler and can keep your AC at a couple degrees higher
Look at the space under your entry doors - if you feel a draft look into purchasing the small flaps that affix to the bottom of the door to create a seal. You might need to buy the insulating strips as well to keep the draft from coming in through the other cracks between the door and the door frame.
Close your blinds to keep the house at a lower temperature during the day in the summer time. Will take less energy to cool it down when you get home.
Shut off your car if you are going to be idling for more than 10 minutes. Fuel is expensive, and the emissions are a detriment to our air quality and the Carbon Dioxide contributes to global warming.
Unplug your applicances when you are not using them. Certain ones continue to draw energy, even if not plugged in. Examples of this include computer power cords and cell phone chargers.
Shut down your computer or hibernate when it is not in use.
Limit the amount of time you spend opening the refrigerator door.
Keep your AC unit modern. These are a HUGE energy suck, especially when they become ancient.
If you have a pool, the pool pump is a big energy hog. Try to limit your use of it, or upgrade to a smaller, low energy use pump.
Only purchase Energy Star rated appliances (tv's, microwaves, washers, dryers...)
Hang your clothing to dry versus using a dryer. Even if you are only able to air dry your jeans and other heavy things, you are cutting down on your dryer use.
Buy a KilloWatt meter and find out how much energy things are using. Your tv and/ or computer use power even when they shut off. I turn off my computer's power bar when I shut it down. That saves a bit, and it adds up over a year.
Use as few lights as possible, and keep them off when you're not in the room.
CFLs (mentioned below) save energy, but... they contain mercury. It's better to not use them or the larger fluorescent lights.
Tighten up your house, if humanly possible, to cut down on air leakage. Air leakage increases heating and cooling costs. Add more insulation to your attic.
....But be careful how you tighten things up: you don't want to have a tight house that holds in a: moisture, b: radon gas, c: toxic chemicals off-gassed from the stuff in your house, and c: carbon monoxide from appliances, if you have that kind. If you get it too tight, you'll have to have an air-to-air exchanger put in to keep fresh air flowing properly in the house.
Use an 'organic solar fabric dehydrator' to dry your clothes, etc.: that's a term I came up with for a clothes line. If your neighbours object to seeing your laundry, ignore them.
You may be able to wrap your hot water heater to reduce heat losses from that appliance. Check with your local utility. Sometimes they give the insulation blankets away to help you save energy.
Keep your thermostat at 68 or 69F instead of 71-72F. Or the equivalent in Celsius. Wear a sweater when it's cooler.
On sunny days, if it's overheating, close the curtains on the south side of your building to keep the sun from adding heat to the interior. You can make and install thicker, insulating curtains and drapes.
These can also help keep the house warmer in the cooler seasons and at night. Some people cover rigid foam pads with fabric or silver mylar and place these over some of their windows to regulate the heat flow
If you're in a cooling environment, i.e., you have to run an air conditioner, you might check into changing the colour of your roof to a 'whiter' colour. That's a bit expensive, though. There might be some kind of paint-on or spray-on coating that will give you a white roof.
You can cut down on heat gain through your walls by placing trellises on the east, south, and west sides of your house (if you're in the Northern Hemisphere) and growing various plants.
The bonus here is that the plants can provide food.
Alternately, Plant deciduous shade trees on the south side can also help cool your house during air-conditioning season. When the leaves fall of in the fall, more sun will reach the house.
Planting coniferous (evergreen) trees on the north side for a wind break can reduce the amount of cooling you get from the north during the winter. If that is appropriate, of course.
Oh: If you live somewhere where it does freeze, you can collect a lot of 1-gallon milk jugs, fill them with water, and allow them to freeze solid.
Place 1 or 2 of these in your fridge will help reduce how much energy is required for cooling during the year. [that is, you're turning it back into an old-tyme ice box..] The problem is that you will need a super-insulated storage space to store several hundred up to a thousand jugs of ice during the non-freezing season.
[ I know of people who actually do use a system like this, I will point out.]
Under optimal conditions, all you will have to do when freeze-up comes is just open the door to the ice-jug cold room, and leave it open until spring thaw comes.
Another possibility is to turn a chest-type deep freeze into a refrigerator. This requires buying a $60 controller that turns the deep freeze off when the interior hits about 30- 33F or so. The chest refrigerator will save you the $60 you spent on the controller in the first year. Or in less time.
It would help to put the chest freezer on a riser platform with storage space under it. That'll save bending down a lot.
Google for "Chest freezer to refrigerator conversion" for more info.
It's difficult to offer any more suggestions without knowing your approximate location or seeing your house and knowing exactly how you live.
dont know
