The Cheapskate Next Door by Jeff Yeager

Author:Jeff Yeager [Yeager, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-59247-7
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2010-06-07T16:00:00+00:00

It’s Easy Being Green, When You’re Cheap

Cheapskates aren’t the only Americans who are prone to be accidentally green, helping the environment perhaps more out of concern for their own pocketbooks than for Mother Earth herself. A 2009 study commissioned by Element Hotels, an eco-friendly lodging chain, found that 41 percent of the people they surveyed said that their vigilance about conserving resources (e.g., turning off lights and appliances, water conservation, etc.) was due primarily to economic considerations. Only 28 percent claimed environmental impact as their primary motivation.

It truly is easy being green, if you’re cheap. Here are a couple of examples from some of my cheapskate friends:

“Not in the dishwasher! That’s where we keep the ramen noodles for our camping trips!” Daniel said as I headed across the Architectural Digest–gorgeous kitchen toward the dishwasher, carrying a stack of dirty plates. Trying to be a good houseguest, I was helping Daniel Newman and Bruce Ostyn with the dinner dishes during my stay with them. Daniel and Bruce, like a number of cheapskate families I visited, usually wash their dishes by hand. While both the economic and environmental impact of machine washing vs. hand washing can be debated, these guys have the system dialed—one dish-pan for washing, one for rinsing—which definitely uses less energy and soap, and wastes no water, since both dishpans are promptly emptied directly onto their Arizona-thirsty plantings in the backyard. “Plus,” Bruce adds, “washing the dinner dishes gives us a little time to talk and catch up with each other at the end of the day.” One hastens to add that a dishwasher used exclusively for storing ramen noodles must last a heck of a lot longer.

“I know it looks like crap, but I can’t see it, because I’m sleeping.” Carol McAnulty is proudly showing me the two-inch-thick pieces of robin’s-egg-blue foam insulating board she cut herself to fit snugly on the inside of the windows in her ranch-style home on the shores of picturesque Platte Lake. She installs them only after dark—“It just takes a second,” she says—and they’ve cut her winter heating bill by more than half. “Plus, this way I don’t need to buy drapes or curtains!” she adds, rightfully reveling in her resourcefulness. Sealing doors, windows, and household cracks is always a good investment of time and money, and usually something you can easily do yourself. Beefing up insulation in walls, attics, crawl spaces, and elsewhere is also usually a sound investment, if you consider what you already have and the cost of upgrading. But when it comes to replacing windows solely to save energy, be careful. The high cost of window replacement can often make it a losing financial proposition. Do your homework before you do your home work: Request an energy audit (usually free) from your local utility company and visit EnergyStar.gov for bright ideas on saving energy.

“Since we are ‘green bugs,’ we designed our backyard to be drought tolerant,” wrote David and Caroline Llewellyn of Euless, Texas, “which included doing away

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