As I think I said previously in one of the many posts related to the active PFC power supply units, I’m not really one of the greenest person on the world. I’m quite pragmatic, I’ll try not to increment waste, but I don’t usually actively try to reduce use. I know, I should care more and be more active on this, but I just can’t get enough time to care about so many things on my day.
There are, though, some things I care about because they are both good for the environment and help saving money, like the active PFC units, who both reduce the power waste, and makes it cheaper to keep a box running by improving its performance (and adding to this the fact that almost all active PFC units are rated 110~250, they are usually more suitable for places like here, where the voltage is actually floating between 195 and 240).
One other thing that is both environmental savvy and good for your wallet is the usage of fluorescent lights, which consumes a lot less than the old-style incandescent lights, and by now, the lights themselves are quite cheap too! I have changed all the lights in my house already, but two (one because I need to change the whole light support, the other because, well, the bulb support is broken and the higher weight of fluorescent lights stops it from making contact, plus for some silly reason if I leave it without a bulb, the other light connected to the same line starts blinking — problem with the electric return).
Then there are the water pressurisers, which I installed on every water outlet in my house, they increase the pressure the water flows, so they not only reduce the water usage, but increasing the pressure makes it way easier to clean stuff like toothbrushes and shaving razors; they also work as raw filters if the water is full of mineral residuals (like here) as most of the time the biggest grains will get stuck instead of coming out. This actually is half a problem as you need to clean the pressurisers regularly, at least once a month here, or the water flow will be easily cut in half.
But there is again another useful thing that is often ignored: the use of rechargeable batteries. In today’s world, there are a lot of devices that use AA or AAA batteries, and I know a lot of people who regularly buy tons of batteries to run them. This is especially critical here during Christmas and Easter, as my mother loves all that silly gadgets that move, make sound or light. Lately I’ve been buying NiMh rechargeable batteries to avoid this.
I started using them for my cordless keyboard (well, the same was true for the mouse, but those were provided initially by Logitech, while the keyboard was supposed to be used with alkaline batteries), but nowadays I have those in all the remotes, in the nail-grinding tool, in the book lights and in the wireless headphones. It’s way easier to just swap them with the charged backup pair when I hear the headphones growing softer.
As with many other choices, there is an initial “high” investment, as they do cost quite more than normal alkaline batteries, but then you easily get to cover their cost when you start recharging them after the first few uses (the average recharge count is about 500). It’s a nice thing to avoid polluting with tons and tons of alkaline batteries, and nowadays there are batteries with high enough mAh to last at least as long as alakine batteries even in high-drain use cases like book lights (at least for AA batteries, whose alkaline counterpart declared average is 2850 mAh: there are AA rechargeable batteries reaching 2800, and even if the cost is even higher, I’ve seen at least a model declaring 3000 mAh).
One step further, that I’m unable to make right now, would be to recharge them with solar panels. It shouldn’t be difficult, after all you just need to invert the polarity; I haven’t seen any specific hardware for this available, if someone knows of some, I’d be glad to know. After all during summer there is a tremendous amount of sun here, I might as well make good use of it. Having it recharge my Nintendo DS and the cellphones would also be nice 😉
Really, if I could put a solar panel just under the window of my room, during summer it could easily take care of recharging my stuff, considering it’s in direct sunlight between 14:00 and 21:00 for three/four months an year. And if there is nothing to charge, it could just be an extra fan that tries to take off the heat from me…
Oh well.
