Quote:
Originally Posted by peter12
Totally. Do the same for water and attach a dollar value to your consumption level.
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It sounds like a hell of an idea, but would anyone really change? We already do pay a bill and we already know that if we use less the bill will be smaller, but most of us don't bother/don't care. Certainly a metre would be more "immediate" but we'd probably ignore it after the gimmick fades off.
Part of the problem (I think) is that things really are too cheap.
Take natural gas for example. I use it to cook, heat water and heat the house. If the bill is a hundred and fifty bucks well ouch, but I got a lot out of it. If I crank my thermostat down 5 degrees, put on a sweater and cut the length of my shower in half then maybe,
maybe my bill is going to be a hundred bucks. So a month of "sacrifice", small as it may be, saves me 50 bucks. Big whoop.
If I'm only doing it to save money, I'm not saving much and I'm stuck wearing a sweater and having a short shower. It's probably not worth it. If I recognize that there is something bigger than saving a few bucks at stake, maybe I will.
There was a commercial on this weekend with The Hated Suzuki and he tells some guy that he's going to save 150 bucks a year if he turns off his beer fridge and the guy starts running around the house turning everything off. 150 bucks? Come on. If you want a beer fridge in the garage, saving 150 bucks over the course of the year doesn't mean squat. Probably wouldn't even notice on your bill, but you'd notice that you have to go into the house everytime you want a beer, so the fridge gets plugged back in.