Keep your Kitchen Green

If you're looking to save energy, water, and money this spring, a good place to start is your kitchen. By some estimates, kitchen appliances account for 26 percent of an average household's electricity use. And dishwashing is one of the more water-intensive activities in your home.  

Here's a list of easy habits you can adopt to use your kitchen appliances more efficiently: 

Oven

• Don't open the oven door to check on a dish — use the oven light instead (20 percent of the heat can be lost each time you open the oven door).
• Keep preheating to a minimum.
• Turn the oven off before cooking is complete (depending on the dish, up to 15 minutes). The heat in the oven will continue to cook the dish until finished.
• If you need to self-clean the oven, plan to do it after cooking a meal while the oven is already hot, requiring less energy to raise the temperature to a higher level.

Stovetop

• Match the pan size to the element size.
• Use the least amount of water and the smallest size pan possible. Otherwise you're wasting energy to heat up excess metal or excess water.

Refrigerator

• Let hot foods cool to room temperature before putting them in the fridge. Otherwise the fridge works even harder to bring the temperature down.
• Keep the freezer full. The more air you displace with food and beverages, the less cold air you lose when you open the freezer door.

Dishwasher

• Run the dishwasher when full; it requires the same amount of energy for a full load as it does for a half load.
• Use the "no heat" drying option.
• Don't wash dishes twice. Although it depends upon the age of your dishwasher, most dishwashers can get your dishes clean without rinsing them first by hand.

Other appliances

• Plug countertop appliances into a power strip that can be turned off after use, saving the energy that would be used by the appliances when in "standby mode." (Depending upon how often you use your microwave, the microwave's digital clock could use more energy than the microwave oven itself.)
• You can also simply unplug appliances when you're done using them.

Virginia Lacy is a Consultant with the Energy & Resources Team at Rocky Mountain Institute .

By Virginia Lacy