29 Ways to Conserve & Save

published 1 October 2007

Still stalling on going green? Procrastinate no longer. We give you 29 ideas for saving energy and water around your home that involve little or no installation and barely a bump in your routine. Individually, they cost less than $100. Collectively, they can save hundreds of dollars a year in household energy bills, thousands of gallons of water and thousands of pounds of carbon-dioxide emissions. You have every reason to follow these tips and not a single reason to ignore them.

Get cracking, folks.

How we calculated the savings

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Many of these calculations rely on figures provided by Jeffrey Langholz and Kelly Turner in You Can Prevent Global Warming (and Save Money!) (Andrew McMeel, $11), updated to reflect an average electricity price per kilowatt-hour of 10.6 cents, the recent national residential average. Because unheated water costs less than a cent per gallon, we focus on conservation over cost.

The late Jane Bennett Clark, who passed away in March 2017, covered all facets of retirement and wrote a bimonthly column that took a fresh, sometimes provocative look at ways to approach life after a career. She also oversaw the annual Kiplinger rankings for best values in public and private colleges and universities and spearheaded the annual "Best Cities" feature. Clark graduated from Northwestern University.