Archive for the '90% reduction' Category

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90% reduction day

Got the last bill today, so I can put up my stats. I think I forgot to write down when I got gas after the last month’s posting, because I don’t have it marked. I know it’s been several weeks since I got any.
In any case, here’s what I have:
Electricity: 4050 kWh (448% of national […]

Lovely dinner

Tonight we had fajitas, with local buffalo meat, two kinds of sweet peppers my next door neighbor gave us, and onions from the front yard (Remember that garden plot I made earlier? Grown right there.) with regional tortillas.
My family loves fajitas, so much so that one of my sons to this day will put homemade […]

Reduction day

Cause … the bills came!
Uh, yay.

Well, in any case, here’s what this month had to offer:
Gasoline: due to … not driving much, I used 7.5 gallons so far this month (for 4 people) — 4.6% of the US national average
Electric: 3207 kWh — 354.7%. Not a good month, and I don’t see the […]

Had fun today

I cooked local leg of lamb in my solar oven. I put it in at around 11:30 am, rock hard frozen. At 4 pm it was done perfectly, using free energy and the house not heated at all.
I could get used to this

Ack

I think last month, my calculations were off for the Riot.
Here’s what I got when doing them again (and we’ve had an excellent month):
This month –
Gasoline: 16.4 gal (for 4 people) - 10% of US average
Electricity: 1981 kWh - 219.1%
Water: 4230 gal (for 5 people) - 28.2%
Natural Gas: 8.2 Therms - 10%
For the year (which […]

Whoa.

I figured out the numbers for April (except the water bill’s not in yet) for the Riot for Austerity challenge, and I got a nice surprise!
Here’s the numbers we started out with back in June 2007:
Gasoline: 59% of the American national average
Electricity: 425% (multiple computers, TV’s, and lights on all the time, in an almost […]

A typical day

(note: this is from yesterday, as this wouldn’t post yesterday and I thought this was lost…)
In spite of the recent turmoil, I’m still with the 90% reduction (aka Riot for Austerity) program. One meme we’re doing is showing each other what a typical day is like. Not tremendously interesting, but here goes:
I normally get up […]

Luxuries and necessities

Lately in the Riot group there’s been a ‘discussion’ (more like a pile on) where one woman talked about her hot tub and several people went on about how she was being flippantly extravagant (thereby somehow insulting their efforts). There’s been apologies, but I think the woman has left the group.
I’ve been thinking about how […]

Reducing

I got involved with a Yahoo group called Riot for Austerity back in June (I’ve mentioned it a couple times here), just to see what sorts of things they were doing. I guess the basic premise is that someone said we all have to cut back to 10% of what the average American consumes/emits/etc. in […]

Easy, fun, cheap green

A discussion’s been raging on the Riot for Austerity group about what suggestions might spur others towards reducing their ‘impact’, whether gauged in energy usage, CO2 emissions, or whatever. Sarah made an interesting comment:
The message that I’m getting from the mainstream green movement (at least those parts of it that aren’t obsessed with “green” gadgets, […]