While Columbia has posted on our decision to choose green energy, and last years rise in cost, I am THRILLED to report that even ConEd's green users are now paying less! While there have been numerous reports that ConEd customers will actually be paying less this summer, we weren't sure how that would effect those who chose one of their green options for fuel. Then came the glorious letter:
"ConEdison Solutions is offering you GREEN Power at a fixed price of 11.90 cents per kilowatt-hour, excluding sales tax. This price will be in effect for a 12-month period beginning on your meter rea date for June 2009..."
Yahoo!
We have currently been paying 18.000000000000002¢/kWh and we can't wait for the break in our electric bill. We'll let you know what the actual difference is - while not the 60% from kWh price once all of the other add-ons are tallied it will hopefully be a significant change.
Over at the Environmental Blog, there's an interesting look at weight loss and its affect on the environment. Simply put, consuming less leads to lower food-related production, which results in less energy used and lower emissions. And if that's not enough, visit the link for a picture of Michelangelo's David that's sure to make you chuckle.
You had great intentions for that rice, right? "Oh, I'll just eat the rest tomorrow," you said. Then tomorrow came. You took a bite of what used to be soft and fluffy rice and instead nearly broke a tooth at the dry and unappealing cold, sad rainy-day-in-a-bowl staring you in the face. What to do when life gives you old rice? Make lemonade! ...um, rather in this case, "fried rice."
A NY Times article from last year claims that we throw out about 27% of food that could otherwise be eaten. Some is discarded after being put on a plate, and some never makes it there to begin with. Since this equates to cash-in-the-trash, JC and I have three ways to keep this number much lower: The Weekly Plan, The Deep Freeze and Improv Night.
The Weekly Plan. We look at what's on sale or what is in the house, and try to build a weekly menu out of it. We've found that if we don't know what we're having by about noon, we're probably going to pay for take-out. It's nothing too fancy, just enough to help us prepare for our week, what needs to come out of the freezer the night before, etc. What's "nothing too fancy?" Here's last week for us:
(click for a larger version) (Lunches with "L.O." means left-over from the dinner before. In that case, we plan to make enough dinner for the next day's lunch.)
The Deep Freeze. This one takes a little effort, but we've found that it's well worth it. Rather than buy small portions of food for a night of cooking, we try to buy family packs when they're on sale. For instance, 3-pound family packs of sausage were on sale at Pathmark last week for $1.99/lb. This is about as cheap as we ever find it, so we bought three. We wrapped them in 3's in saran wrap, then put them in Ziploc freezer bags. When we need sausage, we easily pull 3 links out of the bag, or more as needed. Since we only take out what we need, we're not left trying to make additional sausage meals, or worse -- Throwing out meat due to spoilage.
Measure twice, cook once: Want to only eat 4 cookies? Don't make a batch, just pull out cookies (ready in 14 minutes), sausage or a meal of chili. Want not, waste not. I'm sure I could think of more cliches that are apropos, but you get the idea.
We do the same thing with ground chicken/turkey/beef (flattened bags of 1.5 lbs, which thaw very quickly), larger batches of crockpot meals (chili, tomato sauce, etc.). There's no (apparent) loss in quality in using frozen meat, and the savings in cost combined with the convenience of a mini-supermarket in your freezer makes planning meals so much easier. An added benefit is that the sales for these items usually coincide with our stock, so when the sausage is out, it's usually on sale again.
Super space-efficient, the right side is a stack of 1-Gallon Ziploc bags with ready to thaw: Chicken breasts, sausage, ground beef, Chili and more.
Improv Night. The idea for this post started when JC and I were making a fritatta for dinner. That meal should have lead to a post about kitchen safety and 2nd degree burns, but I digress. We had some cooked string beans from the previous night, and thought -- eh, throw them in! It got us thinking about meals that can be made with leftovers. Leftover white rice from Chinese take out? The next day it' perfect for making a quick Fried rice. Are your strawberries or bananas starting to head towards the light? How about making fruit pancakes (and freezing what's left) or making a batch of fruit muffins? Leftover steak/roast/london broil, etc? Cube it and toss it into a chili and making it what what we call "Cowboy chili". The idea is to find a way to save the food before it winds up in the trash. Be the "Cinderella Man" of your kitchen, and give those onions one last chance in the ring....
You can google what to do with your leftovers, or check out sites like Love Food Hate Waste for suggestions.
It's that time of year again. Time to reclaim your living room and throw out that holiday tree. You won't miss it too much. After all, you'll be finding it's needles until next Christmas. Here's the news release from New York's Strongest:
Sanitation Begins Christmas Tree Recycling on January 5th Sanitation Commissioner John J. Doherty announced today that the Department will begin its annual Christmas tree curbside collection and recycling program on Monday, January 5, 2009. The program will run through Friday, January 16th.
Residents should remove all tree stands, tinsel, lights, and ornaments from holiday trees before they are put out at curbside for removal. Trees must not be placed into plastic bags. Clean, non-bagged Christmas trees that are left at the curb between Monday, January 5th and Friday, January 16th will be collected, chipped, and made into compost. The compost will be processed and subsequently spread upon parks, ball fields, and community gardens throughout the city.
In January 2008, the Department collected over 160,000 discarded Christmas trees.
"The Department is very pleased to offer this special recycling service. Providing collection and recycling options for residents is environmentally valuable and benefits our neighborhoods. Working in conjunction with the City's Parks & Recreation Department allows residents to take part in the recycling process and permits them to even reuse their composted Christmas trees to fertilize for the spring. Compost is a natural fertilizer and is an excellent soil enrichment that promotes the healthy growth of plants and grass," said Commissioner Doherty.
The Parks & Recreation Department will be hosting Mulchfest 2009 on Saturday, January 10th and Sunday, January 11th from 10 A.M. to 2 P.M. at more than 80 sites throughout the city. To find citywide locations, visit the Parks & Recreation website at www.nyc.gov/parks. The citywide service allows New Yorkers to drop off their holiday trees at designated parks for mulching and event attendees can pick up free mulch. All lights, ornaments, and decorations must be removed from the trees prior to drop-off.
For more information on Christmas tree collection and recycling and/or Mulchfest 2009, visit www.nyc.gov/sanitation or www.nyc.gov/parks or call 3-1-1
We'll be getting ours out to the curb this Sunday. Not to beat the rush, or to be the cool ones who do it first, but to end the constant struggle between Pumpkin's natural curiosity about an indoor pine tree and the dubious structural integrity of a $4.95 tree stand. At this point, the stand has become less a water dish for the tree, and more a water dish for the cats. Disposing of the tree will be our first act of simplifying in 2009... until the end of the year when we do it all over again.
I took Pumpkin to the American Museum of Natural History today on a whim. It's rainy here in nyc but I wanted to get out of the apt. We haven't been to the museum in quite a while so I björned up Pumpkin and headed off.
I also went to the Climate Change exhibit on a whim. It's free for members (one of the 2 special exhibits that are and I was not impressed with the other previously...), since Columbia and I are members, I decided it was at least worth a walk-through.
I wasn't expecting what I saw. Not only is the exhibit extremely well crafted visually, but it's chalked full of information for all types of learners and personalities. It also doesn't dwell purely on the negative (of which many already know a lot about because of Al Gore), but offers a multitude of ways to improve the current problem both globally and personally. Seeing so many ways in which I can make a difference renewed my desire to live a greener life.
One 'greener' idea that I've been toying with for a while is getting some drying racks and having Columbia rig a clothes line in the bedrooms. It will save us a lot of money, add humidity to a very dry area of the apartment and save energy. How can we go wrong? In fact, I've decided that this is what I'm going to put on my Christmas list!
JC's Christmas Wishlist
1 - laundry rope
2 - two drying racks
3 - a large bag of wooden clothespins
4 - hooks to rig up the clothesline and a willing husband to execute said rigging
While the exhibit is free for members, it's a pretty penny otherwise. If you plan on visiting the AMNH frequently in the next year, I'd highly recommend a membership as it's mostly tax deductible and full of great perks - this exhibit being on of them.
Amazon has launched a "Frustration-Free Packaging" initiative to save you frustration and money. Get a load of this: In the spirit of the lazy environmentalist (“I'll be green, just don't expect me to alter my habits”), Amazon worked with manufacturers and has found a way to:
...give you the same great quality products
...let you order the same (same shipping, same process)
...deliver these products in packaging that results in less waste
...get rid of "did-they-make-this-barbie-%#@$%ing-secure-enough!?" twisty-ties
...get rid of "I-need-a-boxcutter-to-open-this-boxcutter" blisterpacks
...even save you a few pennies at the same time
Check out this video that shows two adults who have pirate ship fetishes. The time savings is less motivating to me than the savings in sanity (I hate blisterpacks) and the reduction of waste. Saving money is never a bad thing either!
Check out Amazon's full list of frustration-free packaging. I'm telling you, one of these days I'm going to come home and find that Amazon.com has sent me some cookies and a homemade blanket. What a sweet bunch of folks...
While making dinner, I bumped my leg on the recyclables bag that hangs from a cabinet knob. It was overflowing. Again. I didn't feel any satisfaction this time in our 'green' efforts and didn't get the 'green glow.' While we are recycling, there is still quite a bit of waste. I began wondering if there was a way to reduce the amount of waste we have, recyclable or otherwise. One way might be to utilize more fresh fruits and vegetables in our cooking. That is not always the cheapest option, especially for a family now living on one income. When planning meals for next week I want to think more about the produce on sale and how we might center the meals around those items. Surely there are ways to be environmentally minded and frugal. If so, we'll find them!
Posted picture used under creative commons license from Flickr user caseyswest.
We do have a Trader Joe's in Manhattan AND is has a wine store. We've not been there since the wine store has opened but we've heard 'Two Buck Chuck' is more than $2 there. We might have to make a trip to Union Square to confirm... and sample.
Last week while playing Beat the Delivery Boy I decided to whip up some pancakes and eggs for dinner. The recipe I use for pancakes makes too many for Columbia and I to eat in one meal, so he gets a stack for breakfast as well. I was having an internal debate over what to do with the hot flapjacks as I was making more in a skillet:
I'm not turning the oven on and wasting the electricity... if I tent them like my sister always does I'll be wasting aluminum foil... Wait! I can tent them with foil and then use the same piece of foil to cover Columbia's stack for breakfast! The foil will be able to be recycled in the morning!
I was so proud of myself! I found a way to reduce waste and electricity, reuse a resource and then recycle while still making a quick and tasty dinner. While it's not the biggest step, it's something and every little bit helps make our planet a better place. And with that "green" glow about me from being a little more environmentally conscious, we barely needed to turn on the lights that evening. ;)
Posted picture used under creative commons license from Flikr user playbeasy.
"The average U.S. houehold throws out nearly a quarter of the fruits and vegetables they buy" states an AP article on cnn. The statistic is staggering. There are so many reasons to be disgusted, and yet we are partly to blame. New York is filled with stores and carts flaunting their fresh produce on the sidewalk making it impossible not to ogle and drool. Our beloved Fairway Market is one of the best... worst?
One of the ways Columbia and I are stretching our bucks is to make a list before shopping and buy only what's on the list. This is tough, but it's worse to find yourself throwing out moldy strawberries. It's money wasted and we could have eaten it. Occasionally we end up eating odd combinations (doesn't everybody eat chili and butternut squash together?) but the pride in using up our purchases makes it go down easier.
[photo used under the CC license. photo links to photographer]
Rejected post title: "Coned to customers: Just send cash."
A little over a year ago, I posted Choosing a Green ESCO, and subsequently changed my energy SUPPLIER to Con Ed Solutions, which generates energy from renewable resources (wind and large water hydro mainly). Of course you notice no difference in electricity (the lights may be a little greener, but we try to keep the smug index low) and the bill is combined so really nothing to do it but sign up. I knew that I was going to pay a little more for the service, but I agreed with the hope that I somehow helped out... somehow.
So my most recent bill comes today, and I nearly snarfed coffee when I saw the amount. Guess we should have spent the $$ and replaced the old carbon belching air conditioner downstairs (like we claim to do every year)... Oops. Next year, honest. We're doing it.
So to get to my concern, I pay 18.000000000000002¢/kWh for supply from my ESCO. Delivery is still by ConEd (6.89¢/kWh), and I can't change that. But with all that talk about ConEd's rates going through the roof last month, I wondered what con ed charges for supply. Does it finally pay to be green? Transparent information on the web and coned's site is hard to find.
If you are a regular con ed customer (supply and delivery) and your bill states the supply cost, would you share it in the comments? If you are a reader from a far away land, I'd love to hear what power costs in your neck of the woods.
DW has brought it to my attention that the City of New York has much better things to do that jam our curbed trees into the local landfill. How could I be so naive? So curb those trees, New York! Here's a note from the mulchfest site:
How to Recycle Your Tree if You Miss Mulchfest The Department of Sanitation will collect for composting clean holiday trees left at the curb from Thursday, January 3 through Wednesday, January 16, 2008. Make sure all lights, ornaments and stands are removed before setting trees at the curb.
I stand corrected. And the best part is, I don't have to schlep my pine to the park today.
How would you like to help New York City grow? How about reducing space in your local landfill? What's that? You do? Well, you're in luck, for all you need this weekend is one pine tree, much like the one in your living room.
Bring your Christmas tree (sans ornaments and lights, pine needles optional) to a mulchfest site this coming weekend.
Locations in all boroughs
Jan 5th and 6th
10am - 2pm.
For more info and to find locations near you, check out NYC's mulchfest site.
I've had an ink-jet printer for years, and had the highest ambitions to recycle the empty cartridges. Staples once had a "free ream of paper for an empty cartridge" promotion at one point, which I meant to capitalize on. I never did of course. I've become such a paper nazi over the past few years, that the 88-brightness copy machine paper would have caused more unused clutter in the house anyway. I'm sure there's an empty set of CMYK sitting somewhere in my house with a dust layer an inch thick.
I bought a new printer a few months ago, and this weekend had to replace the ink. Lo and behold, attached to the new cartridges were folded up envelopes asking me to send back my empties!
Step 1.Cut a hole Place 1 or 2 empty HP inkjet cartridges in this envelopes without additional packaging or notes. Step 2. Carefully seal envelope (no licking, just sticking -ed.) Step 3. Mail postage paid envelope back to HP.
Sure, there's no reward, but it takes about 3 seconds longer than putting it right in the trash. And then the the warm fuzzy which lasts a lifetime (or at least as long as it takes to print a full sheet photo at max resolution).
My last post on bottled water received a number of comments, and with great information. Here are some of the highlights, and a couple of new articles.
Time to Pack In the Polycarbonates Well, this was a downer for me. Essentially it says that Nalgene bottles, water cooler bottles, and plastic food containers are leaking "a chemical that mimics the hormone estrogen, known as Bisphenol-A (BPA)". From the article:
Effects on men from genderbenders include enlarged breasts and reduced sperm counts. In women, earlier puberty and possible link to breast cancer.
[...]
Pregnant women who consume a chemical found in everyday plastic products such as food containers and water bottles could be putting their unborn children at risk of developing cancer and other diseases when they reach adulthood.
Exposure within the womb to bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical used in the production of plastics, caused changes linked with diseases such as obesity, cancer and diabetes...
I have to file this under "everything will give you cancer". Environment = 1, Columbia = -1.
Josh Dorfman, the Lazy Environmentalist
I.M. Bitter sent me this video. If you don't know about the lazy environmentalist, watch a bit of this video. His basic idea is "change my effects, not habits". One example was the new hybrid Camry. Some people just don't want to buy a Prius for any number of reasons. If the number one selling car in America came with a hybrid option, you can change your effects on the environment with no change to your habits (ie. you're buying the car you would have bought anyway.) Bitter mentions Sigg bottles as an alternative to Nalgene (or commercially bottled water) which are mentioned in the video.
Speaking of, have you heard about Mario Batali's restaurant (among others) banning bottled water? The thought is to save energy on delivering the water, save on recycling, etc. etc. [...] An excoworker's father worked as a New York water tester. Apparently if you filter it, it is more than fine.
I hope more restaurants do the same until it becomes natural. I'm surprised the water people aren't coming back with a backlash...but I guess the water people are less mobilized, have less money and are less evil than the gas and car people.
I mentioned that I heard San Francisco was banning bottled water. I knew I had the finer details missing, so here's some updated info on that.
[Newsweek: link] San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order banning the use of city funds to purchase single-serving plastic water bottles.
Every day there's a new water scare. Forget drinking the water, just trying to keep my head above it is challenging enough.
Bottled water is the food phenomenon of our times. We--a generation raised on tap water and water fountains--drink a billion bottles of water a week, and we're raising a generation that views tap water with disdain and water fountains with suspicion. We've come to pay good money--two or three or four times the cost of gasoline--for a product we have always gotten, and can still get, for free, from taps in our homes.
You can buy a half- liter Evian for $1.35--17 ounces of water imported from France for pocket change. That water seems cheap, but only because we aren't paying attention. In San Francisco, the municipal water comes from inside Yosemite National Park. It's so good the EPA doesn't require San Francisco to filter it. If you bought and drank a bottle of Evian, you could refill that bottle once a day for 10 years, 5 months, and 21 days with San Francisco tap water before that water would cost $1.35.
Unbelievable how much money, resources and waste is involved in the business of water. Makes you wonder how many years before we get canned air? Wait, I take that back. :(
...I'm also thinking that maybe I should just get some type of nalgene bottle instead of buying the liter water bottles. I think reusing them is a good step, but I could do more...
We decided to get a Nalgene bottle, and (since I am such a supportive husband) I bought one also. It actually wound up as three, and each would have its use.
I thought that I would use it for a few weeks, and then be on to the next fad, but they are surprisingly perfect. We fill them up before we leave (mine with ice) and we're good for the trip. The longer the trip, the bigger the bottle. The big guy stays at home usually now, due its weight filled. I love it, and the number of regular water bottles we've bought since we got them, we could probably count on one hand.
Water bottles are definitely more convenient, but if you can fill up before you leave more power to you! :)
In October 2006, Google announced a commitment to solar energy production and launched the largest solar panel installation to date on a corporate campus in the United States. Google has installed over 90% of the 9,212 solar panels that comprise the 1,600 kilowatt project. Panels cover the rooftops of eight buildings and two newly constructed solar carports at the Googleplex.
The company that makes the simplest search, online versions of word and excel, and even free wireless internet keeps on impressing me. Just wait; it gets better.
(from Keetsa) Google.org – the philanthropic arm of Google, Inc. – put $10 million towards promoting plug-in hybrid cars. Plug-in hybrids let you charge up the car by plugging in (to, oh let's say, a 1.6 megawatt oil- and coal-free solar panel array) or any electrical outlet. Then, the first 50 or so miles per day are all electric. You might not use gasoline at all during the week if your commute is 25 miles or less.
On the weekend you decide to take a road trip. The first 50 miles are still electric, and then you switch to gas and you've got a regular gasoline car for the rest of the trip. The end result is a car that gets about 75 mpg with about 70% fewer CO2 emissions than your average car in America.
Anyway, check out the site. It's more than a little late to say "this is a company to watch," but imagine what's in store for them, and for us...
Look over the descriptions of the following two houses and see if you can tell which belongs to an environmentalist.
HOUSE # 1: A 20-room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guest house all heated by gas. In ONE MONTH ALONE this mansion consumes more energy than the average American household in an ENTIRE YEAR. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2,400.00 per month. In natural gas alone (which last time we checked was a fossil fuel), this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not in a northern or Midwestern "snow belt," either. It's in the South.
HOUSE # 2: Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university, this house incorporates every "green" feature current home construction can provide. The house contains only 4,000 square feet (4 bedrooms) and is nestled on arid high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F.)
heats the house in winter and cools it in summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas, and it consumes 25% of the electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Flowers and shrubs native to the area blend the property into the surrounding rural landscape.
HOUSE # 1 (20 room energy guzzling mansion) is outside of Nashville, Tennessee. It is the abode of that renowned environmentalist (and filmmaker) Al Gore.
HOUSE # 2 (model eco-friendly house) is on a ranch near Crawford, Texas. Also known as "the Texas White House," it is the private residence of the President of the United States, George W. Bush.
So whose house is gentler on the environment? Yet another story you WON'T hear on CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC or read about in the New York Times or the Washington Post. Indeed, for Mr. Gore, it's truly "an inconvenient truth."
I think I just threw up a little in my mouth. On the heels of yesterdays hoorah for Gore's solar panels, this is a sad find. Link at the bottom goes to the Snopes article, if you want to verify for yourself.
More curious than ever what other upgrades have been made to the Gore home, I found this measly list from truth and progress:
install a geothermal system that will, among other things, drastically reduce the cost of heating his pool.
upgrade windows and ductwork.
install more energy-efficient light bulbs.
create a rainwater collection system for irrigation and water management.
Commenters at treehugger had these great things to say:
zorn says: ...wasting green energy heating a pool is STILL wasting energy.
Jim says: That's good stuff, but I wonder how much more energy has been wasted retrofitting this stuff as replacements for things that didn't need replacing? Eg. how much energy to create a complete set of new windows?
Anonymous says: Improvements done using sums of monies the average person couldn't hope for.
I would love to have a nice sized home at some point in my life, with a few bedrooms and a yard. At some point you need to evaluate how much is wasted (or wasteful) space. Especially when your career has taken you in the direction his has. >sigh<
Last Thursday was the last day I was able to go through my feeds, and it looks like there's no chance of getting out from under them. I definitely need to scan more and read less. Though personal blogs (especially nyc-based) vs. link-a-day blogs have recently become like peppermint candies for my soul.
On that note, here are my link-a-day links for today. First three links come from Keetsa.
I always want to rent a hybrid when we rent, but it never has been an option. I think the cost of the car is prohibitive for rental companies, but I guess that's changing. Enterprise, by the way, is my car rental company of choice. Not just because they usually have good deals going on, but the one in Yonkers will pick you up from the end of the 1 train. Spend $2 on the train and save about half of what it costs to rent at your local NYC location. Plus, while we wait for the pick-up, DW and I grab an iced coffee at the Dunkin' Donuts.
...and I might partake in a chocolate creme filled cover-your-mug-with-powdered-sugar heart-attack-in-a-fluffy-ball-of-fried-goodness donut. mmmm, donuts.
Solar Electrical Vehicles creates solar roof for Prius Owners Such a slick addition to the already stylish Prius, the company "Solar Electric Vehicles" will create a solar panel for your Prius that adds the ability for 20 miles of solar-powered-driving per day. The cost of the option is supposed to be recouped in about 2-3 years (who knows with gas prices), but that's also 2-3 years that you're putting 29% less emissions into the air.
Al Gore installs solar panel roof in his nashville home Like the fabled son of Krypton, Al Gore too gets his power from the Earth's sun. For Gore, this should have been a no-brainer, but better now than never. Apparently the house features upgrades that are LEED-certified (green) and act as a model of energy efficiency. The renovations come in the wake of the Gore's being chastised for having higher-than-normal electric bills. I guess the squeaky wheel gets the oil (vegetable based, of course).
When we were in Long Beach Island this past weekend, I noticed a good number of buildings had solar panels installed on their roofs. I thought it was such a good sign to make them public and start conversation where there might not have been before. Of course, if anyone should be concerned about global warming, those who have multi-million dollar homes sitting 500 feet off the Atlantic would be at the top of the list.
Thank You Blood Donors A few weeks ago the school I work in had a blood drive. It had been about 5 years since I did it, so I thought I was definitely due for a donation. Yesterday I get this card in the mail telling me, "give blood this summer and win fabulous prizes!" Now, I probably shouldn't ask to be rewarded for a donation (and you can opt out of the prize round if you just want to give), but what the heck? They win, I win... Though in the back of my head, I know this might be one to be filed under "morally grey".
By the way, this "Drippy the Clot" character kinda gives me the creeps.
(Update: Rewards from the gold level include $50gift cards to Mobile, Barnes & Noble, and Home Depot... Morally grey just got a whole lot greyer...)
I thought I'd give you an update on two prior posts.
the dreaded lease renewal form... A few weeks ago, I wrote about my shock at finding a $175/month increase to our rent in our lease renewal form. Our understanding is something shady went on to cause our apartment to become no-longer rent-stabilized (as the older tenants in our building are rent stabilized). The long and short of it is, we're no longer protected by the law which regulates rent increases to normal amounts. If the owners wanted to charge $500/month more, they're completely within their right.
We did call, and asked what the reason was for the super high increase (last year, it was $75). When I asked if there was anything we could do, the managing agent suggested putting our concerns in writing, and so we did. We got their response in the mail at the end of the week.
"The rent is decided by the market rate. We received your letter and understand your concerns. Enclosed is a revised lease renewal form. Your new rent increase will be $125/month."
So that phone call and letter saved us $600/year. If you are in a similar situation, call your landlord and see if there is anything that can be done. Include in your letter any reasons you feel that it is more than you can afford or why the amount is much more than you would have expected. I don't know how often this tactic may work, so you might want to hold on to it until you need it. For us, this was that time.
I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a green planet today I briefly commented at the end of April about the law of unexpected consequences, and its significance in our attempts to "green" the planet. Its application here says the good we do now will have consequences later that we might not enjoy. Example:
CF bulbs reduce energy use.
CF bulbs contain mercury.
In a few years, when CFs are inappropriately tossed into the landfills, the mercury will seep into the water supply, and presumable have negative consequences
I was wondering about that majestic, renewable-energy creating, natural-resource using beauty, the wind generator. In a butterfly-effect sort of way, do wind generators were slow down the wind in those areas? Could they be prevent pollen/seeds/etc from being carried where they need to go? It seems that they have caused a stir, and (surprise!) politicians want them turned off. I wonder what type of energy they would prefer we use? The article Possible Ban on Wind Energy… Why? [www.neutralexistence.com] says this:
[...] The H.R. 2337 bill is camouflaged as an “animal protection” bill which would help save the lives of migratory birds that are killed by wind turbines. Unfortunately, birds are occasionally killed by wind turbines, but the number is so small, it is barely worth mentioning. The fact is, of all bird deaths, only .003% are a result of wind turbines, that’s 3 wind turbine related death out of every 100,000 bird deaths. [...]
Follow the link and read up. I'm sure that there are no animals dying from the toxic crud we're pumping into the atmosphere from oil and coal plants... >sigh<
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