Sanctify Your Refrigerator
Sep. 12th, 2006 10:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebYesterday I made some progress on my plan to "fix" the house by reducing one of my piles of stuff in the office. One thing about piling things up and then letting them sit there is that some of the things (like coupons and catalogs) then expire and are clearly garbage. Other things I realize I don't have the energy to read through and can throw away with very little anxiety. I also filed some things and even made a couple of new file folders. I really love filing cabinets for storage of so many things. Shelves and filing cabinets are the best furniture of all time.
I also found some things that require action on my part. One of those things was a brochure from Whole Foods describing their offer of a gift card to people who buy wind energy credits from the same organization they use.
I've been thinking about doing this for some time. Officially I already direct my utility company to use green energy instead of their regular source for electricity (mostly or all natural gas, I believe--not actually all that scary) by having signed up for their Green Choice program. But I use plenty of other energy (natural gas, petrol, etc.) and even if I didn't, other people do. So I think of it the same way I think of making charity donations--as voluntarily doing something with money to make the world a better place. The IRS won't let you deduct them, but that's not what matters to me.
So how this works (to the best of my knowledge) is that unless you are producing your own electricity (say, with a generator or using solar power), then you are probably getting it off the "grid." Energy gets into the grid from all kinds of power sources, so you have no control. Green sources of energy currently cost more to produce than traditional sources, which is why we still use so much coal, natural gas, etc. By paying a company that provides green energy the difference between the open market price and their cost of production (including profit), you make it feasible for them to provide energy to the grid. So that's basically what's going on when you purchase "energy credits."
Energy credits are also a way for polluting companies to make up for their pollution by supporting just as much nonpolluting energy production. Sometimes this is cheaper for them than building their own cleaner power plant, or it can be a way to keep using their system until it breaks down. Slate has a great article (more fun than this journal entry, that's for sure) on this issue called Got SUV Guilt? Peace of mind can be yours for $274, by Daniel Akst. "For a yearly fee of around $80, a company called TerraPass will offset the damage your SUV does to the atmosphere by spending your money to reduce industrial carbon emissions and to promote the spread of clean energy. They'll also send you a decal and a bumper sticker, so everyone in the neighborhood will know that your gas guzzler has been sanctified." Hee hee!
I've seriously thought about TerraPass before, but never quite got around to it. I just feel like it would be so tempting to sell a bunch of hippie freaks expensive pieces of paper, you know?
But if I use the same company as Whole Foods is using, well, Whole Foods is big, and they're all about not poisoning stuff. So if they ever found out that these guys were becoming fraudulent, we'd hear about it. So I feel safer.
Also, Whole Foods is offering an incentive in the form of a gift card. Even if you don't shop at Whole Foods because you'd rather pay 1/10 the money for your groceries, a gift card from them is still nice. They have, for example, wonderfully soft cotton items of various kinds, and lots of pretty kitchen toys. If you set up an individual plan for $5/month (for at least a year), you get a $20 gift card. If you set up a family plan for $15/month, you get a $50 gift card. The former offsets 250 kWh of energy usage per month, the latter, 750. I read somewhere that the average household uses 10,000 kWh of energy per year (I'm sure that's just for their home, not their car, airplane trips, etc.), which comes out to 833 per month, so that gives you an idea of where these numbers are coming from.
The company they use, Renewable Choice Energy, works only with wind power. Wind power creates no pollution whatsoever (except in the manufacture and transportation of the windmills, I assume). The only bad things I've heard about wind power are that the windmills are too unsightly and tall and expensive for backyard use (dang! because I want one!) and that they kill birds (accidentally, of course). Nowadays they are made with larger, slower-moving blades and are safer for birds.
So I did it. I signed up for the family plan. I will be getting the big gift certificate. And also a little packet of stuff including a bumper sticker, so I can sanctify my car, too. Actually, I'm more likely to stick it to a magnet and use it to sanctify my refrigerator.
I also found some things that require action on my part. One of those things was a brochure from Whole Foods describing their offer of a gift card to people who buy wind energy credits from the same organization they use.
I've been thinking about doing this for some time. Officially I already direct my utility company to use green energy instead of their regular source for electricity (mostly or all natural gas, I believe--not actually all that scary) by having signed up for their Green Choice program. But I use plenty of other energy (natural gas, petrol, etc.) and even if I didn't, other people do. So I think of it the same way I think of making charity donations--as voluntarily doing something with money to make the world a better place. The IRS won't let you deduct them, but that's not what matters to me.
So how this works (to the best of my knowledge) is that unless you are producing your own electricity (say, with a generator or using solar power), then you are probably getting it off the "grid." Energy gets into the grid from all kinds of power sources, so you have no control. Green sources of energy currently cost more to produce than traditional sources, which is why we still use so much coal, natural gas, etc. By paying a company that provides green energy the difference between the open market price and their cost of production (including profit), you make it feasible for them to provide energy to the grid. So that's basically what's going on when you purchase "energy credits."
Energy credits are also a way for polluting companies to make up for their pollution by supporting just as much nonpolluting energy production. Sometimes this is cheaper for them than building their own cleaner power plant, or it can be a way to keep using their system until it breaks down. Slate has a great article (more fun than this journal entry, that's for sure) on this issue called Got SUV Guilt? Peace of mind can be yours for $274, by Daniel Akst. "For a yearly fee of around $80, a company called TerraPass will offset the damage your SUV does to the atmosphere by spending your money to reduce industrial carbon emissions and to promote the spread of clean energy. They'll also send you a decal and a bumper sticker, so everyone in the neighborhood will know that your gas guzzler has been sanctified." Hee hee!
I've seriously thought about TerraPass before, but never quite got around to it. I just feel like it would be so tempting to sell a bunch of hippie freaks expensive pieces of paper, you know?
But if I use the same company as Whole Foods is using, well, Whole Foods is big, and they're all about not poisoning stuff. So if they ever found out that these guys were becoming fraudulent, we'd hear about it. So I feel safer.
Also, Whole Foods is offering an incentive in the form of a gift card. Even if you don't shop at Whole Foods because you'd rather pay 1/10 the money for your groceries, a gift card from them is still nice. They have, for example, wonderfully soft cotton items of various kinds, and lots of pretty kitchen toys. If you set up an individual plan for $5/month (for at least a year), you get a $20 gift card. If you set up a family plan for $15/month, you get a $50 gift card. The former offsets 250 kWh of energy usage per month, the latter, 750. I read somewhere that the average household uses 10,000 kWh of energy per year (I'm sure that's just for their home, not their car, airplane trips, etc.), which comes out to 833 per month, so that gives you an idea of where these numbers are coming from.
The company they use, Renewable Choice Energy, works only with wind power. Wind power creates no pollution whatsoever (except in the manufacture and transportation of the windmills, I assume). The only bad things I've heard about wind power are that the windmills are too unsightly and tall and expensive for backyard use (dang! because I want one!) and that they kill birds (accidentally, of course). Nowadays they are made with larger, slower-moving blades and are safer for birds.
So I did it. I signed up for the family plan. I will be getting the big gift certificate. And also a little packet of stuff including a bumper sticker, so I can sanctify my car, too. Actually, I'm more likely to stick it to a magnet and use it to sanctify my refrigerator.
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Sanctification
on 2006-09-13 01:55 am (UTC)Re: Sanctification
on 2006-09-13 11:22 pm (UTC)