Efficiency Nova Scotia reminds residents that small steps add up to big change

With the new year upon us, it’s a great chance to include an effort to slow climate change to your list of resolutions for 2016. Efficiency Nova Scotia has created a list of five things we can do right now that can make a change, including using LED bulbs, using a smart power bar and washing laundry with cold water.

Edith Steffens, a retired schoolteacher in Hubley, has been making a conscious effort to help slow climate change for 40 years, before it was on many people’s radar. One way she does this is to minimize car usage, despite living in a neighbourhood that is not within walking distance to any amenities, and living in a home that is located a fair distance from the community mailbox.

“When we moved here in 1975, I promised myself that I would never make a dedicated trip by car to the mailbox; I would pick up the mail on my way out somewhere, or on the way back,” she says, adding that she and her husband try to coordinate several errands on each car trip they make, rather than making multiple trips into town.

Steffens also grows many of her own vegetables in their backyard and uses a small energy efficient chest freezer to freeze them, along with grocery foods she buys in bulk. Both efforts also save extra car trips to the store.

Washing her clothes in cold water is another way Steffens helps slow climate change and she even hangs her laundry outside to dry year round. She’s also made changes to their home heating recently, installing a small heat pump which claims to be 300 per cent efficient in electricity to heat production, in the room they use the most during the day.

“Although what I try to do to slow climate change may seem insignificant, if everyone did some of those things, I think it would make a difference,” she says. “There’s the old saying, ‘A journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step’ and I think that should apply here.”

Efficiency Nova Scotia agrees and says that all of these small steps add up to big change. They cite the International Energy Agency (IEA) as saying that “energy efficiency can deliver up to 38 per cent of what’s needed to keep the world within the two degree scenario of global warming.”

Efficiency Nova Scotia says that the actions of Steffens and many other Nova Scotians have already had the effect of cutting the province’s electricity load by nearly seve per cent and created a savings of $100 million in energy costs this past year. These efforts have created 1,200 full-time jobs in Nova Scotia and prevented more than 650,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, which they say is the equivalent of taking 130,000 cars off the road.

For 2016, let’s continue to take those steps, and more, towards slowing climate change.