Sierra Club Green Home

SAN JOSE, CA — San Jose’s Clean Energy Showcase displays solar, wind, and electric vehicle technologies to the public from a display across City Hall. Close to 6,000 people have toured the showcase since it opened in December of last year, including local schoolchildren, Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, and a group of Russian entrepreneurs. (Photo courtesy of the City of San Jose)

The products we buy and use can have a wide variety of public health and environmental impacts including toxic exposures, air pollution, water pollution, climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, natural resource use, waste disposal, and ecosystem damages. The EPA now hosts the greener products portal online, which makes finding environmentally friendly products easier.

Editor’s Note: October is National Energy Awareness Month. Take a look at your home’s energy use and how you can take advantage of incentives for efficiency.

Federal tax credits for upgrading your home with energy efficient items, from windows and doors to insulation and heating systems, are going away at the end of this year. Read about the future of these incentives and what you can do to get some money back on purchases you make now to increase your home’s energy efficiency and save money on your energy bills in the future. (Photo courtesy of Simonton Windows)

The business of greening your home can seem complicated at times. But with refrigerators and freezers it’s simple. These appliances are likely consuming 9% to 15% of your household energy, and the newest ones are models of efficiency. Don’t put up with an old energy hog.

Today’s high-efficiency clothes washers use half the gas or electricity of a standard washer. They also extract more water during the spinning cycle, which reduces drying time and energy. They offer oceanic water savings, too. Standard full-sized washing machines use 40 gallons of water per load, compared with only 18 to 25 gallons for machines that have earned the government’s Energy Star label.

More than 90 million American kitchens have a microwave oven. You don’t need one to eat healthfully or have a green kitchen. But a microwave can shave off some of your energy use, especially if you cook smaller meals or use the kitchen mostly to reheat takeout or warm frozen foods.

Vacuuming regularly is one of the simplest and most effective ways to keep your home healthier. That’s because household dust is a nasty mix of insect parts and feces, molds, hair and skin flakes from people and pets, and lots of other tiny particles you’d probably rather not think about.

Whether you want them to boil water or make a feast, most new ovens and cooktops (together called “ranges”) use about the same amount of energy. Gas ranges are a tad more efficient than electric ones, but not enough to make much of a difference in your utility bill. You may want to consider scrapping your old range because it has, say, an energy-hogging pilot light.

For toast fans, pop-up toasters are the greatest thing since sliced bread. Today’s models accommodate thicker bread slices and bagels, too.

If you want a more versatile appliance, you might be interested in a toaster oven. It can’t toast bread as quickly or sometimes as evenly as a pop-up toaster, but it can broil a filet of fish, bake a few cookies, cook a small casserole, or heat up a small pizza.

Trash compactors started turning up in American kitchens in the late 1960s. They use electricity to ram garbage into a compaction chamber, shrinking trash volume by as much as 80% and cutting down on the number of trips from the kitchen to the garbage can.

From a green perspective, though, there’s no compelling reason to buy a trash compactor. It will reduce the volume, but not the weight, of material that goes into your garbage can.