Become a Vampire Slayer

Friends,

I am part of Leadership Louisville's Bingham Fellows program for 2010. Our focus for this year is "Positioning Louisville as a Green Leader."

I am also part of a sub-group that is focusing on the idea of "personal sustainability." In practice, personal sustainability means looking at your own lifestyle and finding ways of living that will decrease your overall carbon footprint and make you (and me) more responsible users of natural resources.

In particular, our group is focusing on an effort to encourage everyone living in the Greater Louisville area to do "One Green Thing" this year.

In an effort to take my own advice, I'm actually doing two green things. First, I have become an urban farmer (more about that in a later blog). Second I have become a "Vampire Slayer."

What vampires am I slaying? Energy vampires.

What are energy vampires? They are those devices around our homes and offices that suck energy from the circuit even when they are turned off (if they are left plugged in). These include stereos, computers, TVs, printers etc.

All you have to do to slay an energy vampire is unplug it when you aren't using it.

I started with my microwave oven. I'm a bachelor and I use this cooking device about once a month. I used to leave it plugged in and it was draining energy 24 hours a day. Now it only uses energy for a minute or two once a month when I need to heat something up.

More significantly, I have just started unplugging my TV, cable box, DVD player, computer and printer when they are not being used.

And I'm looking for more vampires to unplug.

Here's a link to a site that will help you become an energy vampire slayer while you also explore other ways to be more personally sustainable.


http://www.yousustain.com/solutions/recommendations