I Gave A Friend Away to Save Money and Reduced My Carbon Footprint

He’s gone.  They carted him away today after our very long relationship, a longer one than I’ve had with my husband.  He’s always been a little chilly, in fact, downright cold. But he was faithful, always ready, and never needed any fixing.  He moved with me from an apartment to two homes, from the east to the west coast, never complaining.  We went through many a family dinner, holiday extravaganza and party over the years.  He’d always been responsible for the food.

He showed evidence of aging over the years, just like we all do. There were the spills that occasionally needed to be cleaned off him.  Some bumps and scratches were noticed here and there, but overall, he was a healthy specimen.  It’s been hard to let go of him because he’s been working so loyally all these years.

Deep down, I’ve known it’s time to let him go. How many times do we put off making changes in our lives?  How many times do we say we’ll deal with it tomorrow or think something is not a big deal?  I knew our relationship was costing me money.

I made the phone call to end our relationship.  They came to get him on Friday afternoon.  He was ready and waiting for them to take him away. After so many years, it was over in a matter of minutes.  Out the door and up the driveway he went.

Here’s what happened:

On Tuesday, I signed up online to have Puget Sound Energy come pick him, my refrigerator, up.  If you’re a Puget Sound Energy customer, they’ll remove your refrigerator and pay you $30 (as long as the money lasts and your refrigerator is in working order). The two men who came to pick the refrigerator up, said 85-90% of the refrigerator will be recycled and not end up in a landfill.  So he’ll be reused, not dumped.

According to Puget Sound Energy’s website:

Old fridges and freezers use up to four times the energy of newer models. That’s four times the electricity costs and four times the negative environmental impact.

The Puget Sound people left me with more information about the program:

• PSE has picked up 15,000 refrigerators and freezers.
• PSE customers will save over 18 million kilowatt hours of electricity.
• Save over $1.6 million pounds of CO2 emissions.  The same as taking 1400 vehicles off the road.

Want more information about using energy wisely?  The PSE website has a lot of great tips.

I took a great class this week to learn more about sustainable living, “green” living as you will, so I’ll write about what I’ve learned.  I’ll also write about what I’m doing to make some important changes in the way I live.  My goal is to reduce my carbon footprint and save some money, too!

A hat tip to Marlow Harris for posting a link to the PSE energy program on Facebook.  By the way, check the site to find out all the details and any restrictions.

What are you doing to reduce your carbon footprint?