Waste not, want not

Lowering our utility bills had an immediate financial benefit, but I soon realized that even more than saving money, reducing our energy and water use was, in a very small way, benefiting the planet and making things just a tiny bit better for everyone else living on it. That helped me accept the realization that making real changes was going to cost money.

For years we could do little more than turn down our thermostat, turn off lights once we no longer needed them, and take shorter showers — all of which didn’t make a significant dent in our utility bills. The advent of compact fluorescent bulbs, or CFLs, finally allowed me to make a noticeable difference, albeit at the cost of replacing every one of the many incandescent bulbs in our house with more expensive CFLs. Later, when practical LED replacements came onto the market, I recycled all of my CFLs in favor of that new technology (but only after their initially astronomical high prices came down to a more reasonable level). Not only do these newest bulbs use far less energy even than CFLs, I greatly prefer the quality of light they emit.

Saving water didn’t take waiting for a new technology to come along, although technology has played a part. In our case, the vast majority of our savings came from the realization that our household, like most single-family homes, uses half (or more!) of its water outside the house. In our case, we had two main consumers: our good-sized front lawn, and a swimming pool. I purchased a cover for the pool to minimize evaporation, but that only did so much. Eventually, after the kids had moved away and California began experiencing more frequent drought years, we made the big decision to eliminate the pool altogether. That not only saved us a lot of water, it also saved us a lot of electricity: Those pumps require a lot of power! As a bonus, we gained additional garden space.

As for the lawn, we eliminated that in favor of native and drought-tolerant plants, and switched entirely to drip irrigation. Although our drip system requires occasional maintenance — drip hoses are easy to damage, and the emitters do sometimes clog — we can fix them ourselves, and the parts are cheap and easy to obtain. Then, we swapped out our old irrigation controller for an internet-connected one that adjusts our watering schedules based on the seasons and the current weather, ensuring that we aren’t watering the garden when our plants don’t truly need the water. Finally, Redwood City upgraded our water meters, enabling us to track our hourly water use and receive alerts when a leak is detected.

Minimizing demand is a great and relatively economical first step, but that can only get you so far. Eventually, I had to start considering the supply side. At one time, our house actually had a well, but it wasn’t functional when we moved in, and is now long gone. That’s too bad since, although well water in our area isn’t usable for drinking, a number of homes in the area do use it to irrigate their yards. Instead, I turned my focus to our energy use, and installed solar panels. Then, as we could afford it, an abundance of “free” electricity induced us to swap our gas furnace for an electric heat pump and our gas cooktop for an induction one. These days we use very little gas (for hot water, primarily) and pay essentially nothing for electricity.

Spiking energy prices and the prospect of another tough water year (thanks to very little snow) have me glad that I became a true dad, having taught my kids not to waste precious resources such as water and energy. It’s a lesson we need to take to heart if we hope to continue living comfortably in a world over which we clearly have little control. And that’s no joke!