Just in case you have not joined the wave.  Replacing incandescent light bulbs with Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs or CFLs can save you lots of money.

CFL’s use about 66% less energy and last about 10x longer. The estimated amount of savings is up to $39 over the life of the CFL. A typical house may have over 60 light bulbs.

Per the Energy Star.gov: “If every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR CFL, we would save enough energy to light more than 2.5 million homes for a year and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of nearly 800,000 cars.”

Home Depot now has 23 Watt (120 Watt Equivalent) Flood Light CFLs.  14 Watt (60 watt equiv) Candelabra CFLs are available.

The one gotcha – CFL’s contain mercury, so you cannot simply throw them in the trash.  You need to recycle them at places like Home Depot, Ikea. Several local hardware stores including Brownie’s in San Francisco and many Ace Hardware locations also recycle CFLs. Also be very careful if a CFL breaks.

CFLs will last a lot longer if you do not turn them on and off frequently.  Leave them on if you will be back in 5 minutes.

Flipping a CFL on is equivalent to 5 seconds of CFL ON time.

Simply Green is a cleaning product that is marketed as nontoxic and environmentally friendly.  Analysis has shown that it is not that simple and nontoxic as it contains EGBE, also known as 2-butoxyethanol: “the company said it didn’t detail all the chemicals in its products to protect its formula from piracy…. ”

“William Nazaroff, a professor of environmental engineering and chairman of the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley, said the EPA erred when it removed the chemical from the hazardous air pollutants list.

Nazaroff conducted a study for the California Air Resources Board in 2006 on the indoor air chemistry of cleaning agents and toxic air contaminants.

He found that people using some common products containing EGBE could be exposed to levels 12 times greater than California’s one-hour exposure guideline.”

A quick look at the Simply Green Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) shows the 2-butoxyethanol ingredient. It also has <1.2% VOCs. Far from a product that is all natural. Furthermore, the Simply Green bottle does not even list all ingredients.

My advice is to skip Simply Green and the controversy and try cleaners from Seventh Generation or Method that list all their ingredients

Edmunds.com has a new Gas-Guzzler Trade-In Calculator that helps you figure out the pay back period and fuel saving associated with trading in a vehicle for a new more fuel efficient one.

“A common example demonstrates the potential pitfalls of ditching that SUV: A consumer trades in a four-year old GMC Yukon, worth $13,483, for a new $21,647 Toyota Prius. The difference is $8,164. If the consumer drives 1,200 miles per month and gas costs $4.07 per gallon (national average), the monthly fuel savings will be $201.34. While this may seem attractive, it will take 41 months to pay back the additional cost of the Prius over the trade-in value of the Yukon.”

Considering a Prius would probably cost more than $21,647, the pay back time is even longer especially if gas prices fall. Consider regular high mileage compacts such as the Honda Fit.

Also consider a recent (2 or 3 year old) vintage fuel efficient preowned car.  The biggest cost in owning a car is depreciation at almost 50%, followed by fuel costs at near 20%.

Source: CNNMoney.com

CNNMoney.com has a nice analysis of how fast a hybrid pays off. They compared a buying a new $24,548 Toyota Prius Hybrid vs a conventional $19,635 Toyota Camry.

You can see that it takes 4.5 years to break even with gas at $4. Looks like they factored in a $1000 markup over MSRP for the Prius. Some hard numbers that should help prevent you from paying a crazy markup for the hot Prius.

Remember that it takes a LOT of energy to build a car, so it may be more eco to keep what you have or buy a used fuel efficient vehicle. A hybrid still emits about 20 pounds of carbon with each gallon of gas you burn up.

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