A letter from a Weston Resident to the WCG

I grew up in Weston in the '70s and '80s and have recently moved back, after several years in (gasp) California. My wife and I have been taking many of the steps advocated in your column in the Crier, and it is working, and the sacrifice has really been minimal. Here are some other tips you might want to share with your readers that I thought I'd pass along.

We replaced many of our light bulbs with high efficiency fluorescents. Although the quality of the light given off by these bulbs is continually improving, sometimes it is not comparable to the light from our old stand-by incandescents. In certain rooms where we have recessed lighting, we elected to replace 1/2 the bulbs, and the light is still terrific and we've cut our energy costs bigtime. This may be a good solution for others who are concerned about the color/quality of the light.

One thing many people are not aware of is how energy hungry their coffee maker is. Most coffee makers consume 750 to 1000 watts, and are left on for hours. Everyone know that hair dryers are power hungry, and if you tell them that leaving their coffee maker on for hours is not that much different from leaving their hairdryer running for hours, it seems to really have an impact. Also, at $.18 per kwh, it costs about $300 per year to run your coffee maker for a few hours every day....imagine that!

Another great tip has to do with outside lighting. Our house has five lantern style light fixtures, each with five or six little 40 watt candle bulbs. We don't turn them on anymore. We figured out that if they come on at 7 p.m. (average) and stay on until 11 every night, it was costing us about $400 per year to have these on...and for whom, the squirrels? That was insane.

We also bought canvas shopping bags, carbon credits for our cars (we've got a big SUV....guilty), I use Tupperware instead of disposable packaging in the company cafeteria, and we're trying to cut back on consumption overall...that's the hard part.

Anyway, there are lots of little steps we can all take. Our family is a big consuming family, so we're trying to do what we can. Keep up the great work.

Mitch Solomon
Deer Path Lane
Weston