We’re always told to turn the lights out as we leave the room, or to shut off the water while we brush our teeth, but those are just two places that we might be wasting energy. In Joe Hanson’s third episode of It’s Okay to Be Smart’s energy series, he explores the surprising places that we can be more energy efficient: Food waste, water waste, fertilizer waste, food transportation, gasoline consumption for powering cars, planes, trains, or ships… the list goes on.
But where there are problems, there can be solutions. He has a few suggestions to get us thinking about how we can improve our energy usage.
Next, watch Hanson’s two other energy episodes: The Essentials of Energy and Will We Ever Run Out Of Oil?
Related solutions in the archives: The Landfill, Inside the Compost Cycle, turning human waste into drinking water, and Baltimore’s Trash-Collecting Water Wheel. Plus, a primer: What is energy?
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