What Happens to Recycled Appliances?

When you’re ready to buy a high-efficiency TopTen-listed appliance, you’ll face a dilemma: what to do with the old one? Is the extra effort it takes to make sure it’s responsibly recycled worth it? The answer is that it may not take extra effort, because many localities have extensive appliance recycling programs. And even if it does, yes, it’s worth it.

Repair or Replace?

Your dishwasher motor starts to sound like it was made for a small plane. You can scoop the ice cream that comes out of your freezer with a piece of paper. Your clothes washer works, but more or less as it has for 20 years. What should you do? Recycle them and buy new? Or pay for them to be repaired?

How to Read Your Utility Bill

For most people, utility bills are little headaches that we have to deal with 12 times a year—confusing jumbles of numbers that are for the most part meaningless until we jump down to the “Amount Due” number and our eyes bug out. When you understand what all those numbers mean, however, your utility bills can be less of a headache and can also help you learn where to save energy and cut costs.

Electricity and Carbon: What’s the Connection?

It’s easy to take electricity for granted. You press a button or flip a switch and your lights come on, your computer hums to life, and your favorite TV shows suddenly appear on the screen. But all that electricity has to come from somewhere, and most likely, it’s coming from a place that’s filling the atmosphere with climate-changing greenhouse gases.

Why Would Utilities Help You Use Less Energy?

Energy providers may seem like uncommon businesspeople. Where most businesses want you to buy more of their products, energy providers want you to buy less. They offer many inducements to get their customers to reduce energy consumption: rebates on efficient products, home energy audits, incentive to insulate your walls and upgrade your windows.

Top Ten Reasons to Go Energy Efficient

Why be energy efficient?  Here are the Top Ten reasons.