So how do you heat up your beverage?

Being the technical geek that I am, I was in the kitchen one morning getting ready to make a cup of tea, and the following question popped into my head, ‘Does it use less energy to heat up the water in the microwave or on the stove?’ Most people wouldn’t think of a stupid questions like this, or if they did, they would simply dismiss it as a question you ask yourself BEFORE you have had your caffeine fix for the morning. Not me though! I pulled out the old trusty watt-meter (a tool only a true environmental geek would own), and measured how much energy it took to heat up the water in the microwave and on the ‘Mr. Coffee’ which is comparable to the stove since it is just a burner. Well, after carefully measuring the same amount of water to make sure the experiment was the same for both devices, the winner was the microwave. To heat up the water in the ‘Mr. Coffee’, it took 80 watt hours of electricity versus 62 watt hours in the microwave for a savings of 18 watt hours. That really isn’t a huge difference, but a savings is a savings. Now, would I throw out my tea pot just because of this difference? Probably not since it is a pretty minor difference (and the tea pot was a wedding gift), but it was still an interesting question, and I will probably start microwaving my tea whenever I think about it instead of heating up the stove.

What can you take from this? Well, I guess my point in the experiment was to start to question the things that we do, and ask yourself if there is a better, more energy-efficient way of doing the same thing. In some cases, like mine, the answer may not prove to save you much, but at least you will be asking the right questions. Then again, this is just life according to Troy.