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Green Made Easy An Interview with Chris Prelitz

Sydney L. Murray | 1/28/2010

Contrary to popular belief, going green doesn’t have to be a painstaking or costly process. Not only can it be easy, but it can even save you money.
For over 20 years, Chris Prelitz, green pioneer and author of Hay House’s Green Made Easy: The Everyday Guide for Transitioning to a Green Lifestyle, has been helping businesses and homeowners become both environmental and economical at the same time. His book is loaded with simple ideas to lessen our carbon footprint, from green house cleaners to water efficiency, proving that many people making small changes can have a big impact. Recently I had the opportunity to speak with Prelitz about what we can all do to go green, starting today.
Vision Magazine: How did you first get involved with going green?
Chris Prelitz: The truth is, I was raised that way. My mother was part Native-American. When my father was laid off, she basically said, no problem at all; we’ll just replant our entire backyard with vegetables. I was 14 at the time and the oldest of six. We started living off of what we grew in the garden and we composted. My mother taught the girls how to darn socks and mend clothes because she grew up that way. That’s always stuck with me. My father was a brilliant engineer so I had high tech [influences] and rural, indigenous roots. Then I got involved in construction and building design. My grandfather built his own passive solar home. Early on, I realized the importance of the orientation of your home and working with nature. In college I studied archeology and anthropology and learned more and more about how indigenous people lived off the land before we had electricity and cheap gas.
VM: What are some things we all can do to live a more sustainable life?
CP: The one that everyone talks about is the first thing you should do: Change the light bulbs. Our current incandescent light bulbs are literally miniature heaters. You’ve got to fight that with air conditioning in warm climates, instead of using high performance lighting like compact fluorescents and LEDs. These give you the same light for much less electricity and no heat.
Everyone’s concerned now about climate change and CO2 emissions but what most people don’t realize is that buildings in the United States contribute more CO2 green-house gas emissions than all of our cars and trucks combined. That’s because the electricity used to run our buildings is primarily made from burning coal. So even though we don’t see tailpipe emissions in our homes, they are being speared out of a smoke stack somewhere from a coal burning power plant.
The main thing you want to start thinking about is how you can lower your carbon footprint, which lowers the electrical consumption in your home, which then means you have more money at the end of the month. It’s a triple win.
The other idea I talk about is dancing with the sun and the earth. We’re starting to pay attention to the sun so that we can keep it out of our buildings in summertime and let it in during the winter for free heat. Many people put up curtains or mini blinds inside their homes on the east or west. It seems darker, but the heat of the sun has already come through the glass and that heat is still in the room. So it looks darker, but it doesn’t help at all. You want to shade the glass and the windows outside; [placing] trellises, overhangs and landscaping on the east and west of the home is really beneficial. That can dramatically make your home more energy efficient and comfortable.
Another thing you can do, on a whole different subject, is eat less red meat. [The meat industry] has a huge impact on water, methane and food production. Many people think they can’t be green because they can’t afford a hybrid vehicle. My response is that if you eat less meat, you’ll probably have a bigger impact than driving a hybrid.
Shrink your lawn and replace it with native or edible landscaping. A grass lawn is food for nobody; the native animals can’t really eat it much and it doesn’t do anything for us. When you plant a native garden, the edible landscaping grows. Then you’re feeding nature again and using much less water. Many natives will solely rely on rainfall. Lowering your water use also lowers the carbon footprint. 19 percent of all the electricity used in California is used just to move water and sewage around—that’s almost one fifth of all of our power. So if you lower your water use, you’re also lowering the overall carbon footprint. You can also do small things, like using a low flow showerhead, which then saves your gas and electricity to heat the water. Overall, it’s just doing more with less energy.
VM: That leads to my next question: how can going green be both environmental and economical?
CP: When we’re efficient, there’s a great return on investment. For example, one big company, Adobe Software, invested in three of their buildings and they didn’t do solar. That’s what people think going green is, and it’s actually the last step. It’s just simple small things, like more efficient water aerators, better heating and cooling, and the right kind of shades on the windows. So they spent $1.4 million retrofitting three buildings. The first year, they saved over $1 million in energy and water. No other investment will give you the kind of return that going efficient will. That’s why the brand new head of the energy department, Dr. Chu, came out and said weatherizing our homes will have the biggest impact on America’s carbon footprint and [bring in] more dollars at the end of the month for American families. Just changing one light bulb will give you between $50 and $75 dollars in savings over the life of the bulb. That’s a lot. Especially because, like I said before, you need less air conditioning to offset it. The bottom line is that we’ve been fighting nature. We’ve mostly constructed buildings and lived in ways that don’t care at all about what exists naturally. Instead we control our climate with a thermostat, electricity and natural gas. By working with nature, we need much less fossil fuel input and when we do that, we save money. It’s a win-win all around.
VM: It’s interesting that you said to do solar last. Can you talk a little more about that?
CP: Here’s the bottom line: One solar panel installed costs about $1200. It makes about $4 of electricity a month and it takes a lot to pay it back. If I just change out four light bulbs for around $30, that will also make me $4 a month. So if your bill is $200 a month, you’re going to have to fill your roof with panels. On the other hand, if you wanted to spend $1000 total and make your home very efficient first, then your solar system only has to be half or one third the size. It’s like taking a powerboat and making it a sailboat. You can’t just bolt the sail on; you first have to make it efficient and streamlined—it’s the same with our homes.
Power vampires are a big one. Many things you don’t know about drain power all the time, like TVs, entertainments centers and computers. We sell smart strips on our website that are power strips with a little brain that shuts off the power. When you turn off your TV, the smart strip senses that you want it off, so it kills all the power, rather than letting it leak. When I was a kid, we turned the TV on and it took a minute or two to warm up. Well, consumers didn’t like that so now what they do is they keep the TVs warm all the time. You can use a smart strip for anything that has a cube, like your cell phone chargers, for example. If you touch that cube and it’s warm, even if it’s not plugged into your phone, that means it’s using electricity all the time. It’s also a little heater in your house, which doesn’t help.
VM: So given where we stand today, do you have hope for the future?
CP: Absolutely. People are becoming aware. I think the recession in some ways might be a blessing. I’m actually going to clear up the word; instead of “recession,” it can be a “reassessment.” We can slow down and really ask ourselves, is the direction we’re heading in the wisest choice for us as stewards of this planet? Or might this be the time to change directions? I think that overall, people are really feeling this. We don’t have as much free time, we’re all running too fast, we’ve turned into consumers instead of citizens. People are spending lots of time, money and energy to try to tier above working class, rather than asking, what do I really need, what gives me the most amount of time and what really fills my spirit and my mission in life? So I think this is a great time to reassess and say, how can I be a part of this major movement? It’s truly a movement from the heart of humankind.

Chris Prelitz will be appearing at Hay House’s I Can Do It! event April 30 to May 3 at the San Diego Convention Center. To find out more about I Can Do It! visit www.icandoit.net. To order Green Made Easy, visit www.hayhouse.com or call 800.654.5126. Learn more about easy ways to go green at www.newleafamerica.com or call 888.278.4333.