Water Conservation
Well we did it! As we discussed in some of my June posts, we have been working hard this year to conserve water, both indoors, and more importantly in the yard. On our final water bill for the year, we came in 21,000 gallons below our allotment, or almost 9% below. While this is good, what is even more remarkable is that last year we were almost 40,000 gallons over our allotment, so in total we have cut our water usage by almost 22% Not bad if I say so myself!
We have also been cutting down on our electric useage, mostly on air conditioning. We only largely ran it for one month this summer, rather than the four months that we normally run it. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but our electric bills have certainly been lower. Now to create some goals for next year!
December 3rd, 2015 at 9:30 am
Hey Alon!!!That is very true — suburban sprwal was encouraged as a matter of government policy. A lot of cities had vibrant urban neighborhoods and convenient public transportation rail networks that were destroyed in the rush towards cars and suburbs. This happened here in Bordeaux: the original tramway rails were buried to make more lanes for cars; Meriadeck the working-class neighborhood was razed to make room for Meriadeck the shopping center and office complex.On the other hand, here there’s been a huge public effort to reviatlize the urban center. They’ve dramatically increased the pedestrian-only area in terms of both roads and public places. Plus they’ve installed a new tramway system. I know that (considering the oil situation) U.S. cities are also moving in the direction of pedestrian, bike, and public transportation, but it’s harder to do because U.S. cities developed largely with the car in mind, thus are a lot harder to overhaul than their European counterparts (which typically have a compact-yet-significant “old quarter” that can serve as a pedestrian area and a destination for public transportation).Even if it’s government policy that directs urbanism-vs-sprwal, people have to want urbanism in order to change the government policy, and it’s more of a challenge in the U.S. In an oversprwaled city, public transportation is more costly to install and less efficient to use. To me the big difference between the U.S. and Europe on urbanism is the following: when you run faster, you go a lot farther, but if you discover you’re running in the wrong direction, then you have a whole lot farther to run back.