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APARTMENT GUIDE / MONDAY, MARCH 8, 2010 / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / KANSAN.COM
1, 2, 3, and 4 Bedrooms Available
3801 Clinton Pkwy 785-841-7849 LorimarTownhomes.com
211 Mount Hope Court #1 - 785-843-0011
Photo Illustration by Howard Ting/KANSAN
Students bundle up in order to keep their thermostat at a low temperature and save money on utility bills.
Living sustainably can reduce the cost of bills
BY MOLLY MARTIN mmartin@kansan.com
If her feet are cold, she can put on a pair of socks.
For Piper Wolfe, a senior from Tulsa, Okla., 65 degrees Fahrenheit is the limit — the thermostat goes no higher than that. Regardless of the temperature outside, the rule never changes; even throughout the coldest months of winter, the three-bedroom house on Kentucky St., built in 1904, gets no warmer.
As a result, Wolfe and her roommates keep their monthly heating bills low and help sustain energy at the same time.
"Even if you don't agree with climate science, living more sustainably means less pollution, more resilient communities, and a more prosperous future for all of us." Severin said.
"It's a win-win situation," Wolfe said.
In addition to turning the thermostat down a few degrees in the winter, Severin said students can begin to live more sustainably in their respected dorms, apartments or houses by finding ways to reduce and reuse. For example, using less water - especially hot water - helps saves energy. This, in turn, benefits students financially with a lower energy bill.
Jeff Severin, director of the Center of Sustainability at the University, said living sustainably was becoming increasingly important as people continued to use resources and create waste at alarming rates.
Severin said students could enter their utility bill amounts at http://www.mygreenquest.com/kucs/, allowing the GreenQuest device to keep track of one's sustainability progress.
In order to live sustainably in a house with
four people, Wolfe said they held each other accountable.
"If one of my roommates leaves a light on, another one of my roommates will tell her to try to remember next time." Wolfe said.
Practicing sustainability at home is not a lifestyle change. Severin said it was more of a cultural shift. If students are interested in living more sustainably, he said they could find suggestions at http://www.sustainability.ku.edu/Green_Guide/contents.shtml.
Severin said other people in society,however, chose to use resources in whatever way they wanted without considering the longterm environmental effects.
Wolfe said she and her roommates made the effort to live in a sustainable house because they were all very environmentally-minded. When Wolfe first moved into the house in the fall of 2008, she said was not aware of many sustainability practices, but she respected her new roommates' concern with reducing waste.
"What is cheapest and easiest isn't always what sustains us," he said.
"Living sustainability doesn't mean sacrificing the comforts of modern life." Severin said. "It just means enjoying those comforts in a more responsible manner and really thinking about the impacts of our personal choices."
While students like Wolfe work to make a difference and better the environment in their daily lives, Severin said other students also make a difference on campus and in the community by raising awareness.
"It kind of clicked and I habitually started doing these things," Wolfe said.
Edited by Megan Heacock