Built Environment

For more information on Built Environment in Southern Nevada explore the resources below.

The making of an energy efficient home

Many houses and commercial buildings across Nevada fall short when it comes to energy efficiency. This can cost us hundreds of dollars every year in wasted energy and increased maintenance costs in addition to increasing our environmental footprint.

There is however so much we can do by retrofitting our existing buildings. Improving energy efficiency is the most cost-effective way of reducing our environmental footprint and should be done in conjunction with increasing clean energy throughout Nevada.

David Gibson, founder of Powered by Sunshine and energy efficiency advocate shows us how we can retrofit our buildings to make highly efficient, environmentally friendly and sustainable home.

Contact us to find out how you can make your home more energy efficient. Plus arrange a free energy audit

What Uses The Most Energy In Your House

MostEnergyUseInYourHome

If you are looking to save money and energy around your home, you need to know what consumes the most energy first. Turning off lights, for example, is touted as a best practice around homes – but do you know how much electricity your lights use compared to the rest of your home, and how much of a difference this will make? To help your energy-saving practices make the most impact, here’s a list of the things around your home that consume the most energy.

HVAC Systems: The average American family consumes a huge amount of energy to power heating, venting, and air conditioning systems (HVACs). This is particularly true if you use electrical burners or heating elements for heat, because these waste a tremendous amount of electricity compared to efficient gas burners or heat pumps. Switching to a new HVAC unit or different type of fuel can make a big difference here, especially for older systems. However, up-front HVAC costs are also some of the highest when it comes to appliances.

Water Heaters: Because many water heaters use the aforementioned electric heating elements, they tend to be enormous energy hogs, especially larger versions that aren’t used very often (a water heater typically keeps water hot for long periods of time no matter what). Often it’s a race between water heaters and HVAC system to see which can use the most energy. One of the most effective ways to cut back on water heater electricity is to switch to a “tankless” version that heats water up only when it is needed.

Refrigeration: Refrigeration is, after, all, closely related to HVAC systems – so it’s no surprise that refrigerators take a lot of power to keep those temperatures low. Combine refrigerators with freezers, and you get one of the most greedy appliances in the house. Common sense rules go a long way here: Keep the door closed whenever possible, and set temperatures for as high as they can safely go.

Lighting: Lighting’s electricity requirements vary greatly based on how many lights you use, what kind of bulbs you use, and your lighting habits – but after the big heating/cooling list, lighting does tend to be one of the worst energy hogs around (with the exception of notorious pool pumps, a much rarer appliance). Switching to LED bulbs and using natural lighting can help a lot here.

Entertainment Devices: Finally we reach entertainment devices, which are actually becoming more a dangerous since more electronics are now “always on” to await commands, process information, or gather data from smart devices. This creates a low but continuous electricity drain that can cost you money, especially if you don’t shut things off.

Other Major Appliances: Here we have things like dryers, dishwashers, and many other types of large appliances around your home. This is a trickier area, because these appliances are harder to replace or upgrade. Use them as efficiently as you can to decrease time between loads.

Green Homes : When Will Solar Start to Pay Off

Savings Breakdown:

Did you know that any solar power generating capabilities that you introduce to your home setup will start to pay for themselves from the first day on? A myriad of solar options can be implemented into your household’s energy grid to save literally thousands of dollars on energy bills throughout the years once your initial solar investment is paid off. You can expect your initial investment to be recovered over time depending on how much technology you choose to install.

For example, the cost of a basic solar panel setup that supports your lighting and water systems can typically be recovered within six months to a year after installation. But this is simply because the costs you’d expect to recover would be much less than those to be expected after a solar metal roof or thermal window investment.

But the most important thing to keep in mind is that ultimately, any solar setup is sure to provide a return-on-investment that’s multiplied by several times what your initial investment was. In addition to an ongoing return-on-investment by way of decreased energy bills, you should be able to include the actual costs of your solar system into the asking price of your home if you later decide to put it on the market. And there’s a whole host of other benefits that products like solar panels, thermal windows, and solar roofing have to offer which will effectively increase your solar system’s overall payoff.

Income Possibilities

If your solar system can be hooked up to the commercial power grid, your local power company may be interested in purchasing any extra power you generate that isn’t needed by your own household. This gives you an opportunity to generate passive income that can be used to improve your solar system over time. In fact, this opportunity might even make it possible to create a virtually non-existent monthly energy bill as time goes on.

Improved Sustainability

One of the best ways to optimize your household’s sustainability and reduce its overall carbon footprint is to install solar components into your home’s energy design. Not only can you feel good about playing a minimal role in the overall oil use within your community, but you’ll help keep the air and water cleaner for the generations of families to come. Solar also helps keep the earth’s soil free of dangerous contaminants and pollutants—this is especially important where commercial food products tend to be grown.

Tax Credit Opportunities

If your solar system or component is qualified, you can claim up to 30 percent of your initial investment as a tax credit when it comes time to file. Various solar and wind systems qualify for credits—amounts vary depending on the type of system you choose, when and where it gets installed, and how the system was paid for.

Contact: Ryan Miller

Email: ryan.miller@modernize.com Website: http://www.modernize.com

Sector(s): Built Environment, Community, Energy Efficiency, Green Building, Renewable Energy

Keyword(s): energy, green, green building, homeowners, incentive, photovoltaic, renewables, residential, sustainability, sustainable

Start Recycling at Your Home

Republic Services is a nationwide Fortune 500 organization Republic Services is a Fortune 500 organization that is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. It serves more than 13 million people across the country and employs more than 30,000.

Residential Recycling Services

Your community may be participating in one of the Residential Recycling Pilot Programs that does not require pre-sorting.

Customized recycling programs that fit the needs and desires of local communities is one of our strengths. We offer flexible collection schedules as well as a wide selection of items that can be collected and processed for recycling. We encourage the community to support us in this effort by participating in our free recycling program. We will visit your home once every other week to collect your recyclable items.

Recycling is simple. If you have individual baskets, follow these four basic guidelines:

Red Basket: Aluminum cans, tin cans and plastic bottles. Empty all cans and plastic bottles. Aluminum cans can be crushed and tin cans should be rinsed out. Remove all lids from all plastic soda bottles and milk jugs. Make sure your plastics are recyclable by looking for the recycling symbols that have a 1 or 2 inside the triangle.

White Basket: Newspapers, telephone books, and magazines. Please remove all strings and rubber bands.

Blue Basket: Glass bottles. Please rinse bottles. Remove caps. Do not break glass. IMPORTANT: Keep all glass jars and bottles separate from other recyclables. DO NOT include mirrors, plate glass, chinaware or ceramics.

Corrugated Cardboard: Flatten cardboard boxes and place them next to the recycling baskets.

Excess recyclables may be placed alongside your baskets as long as they are contained and in clear plastic bags labeled recyclables. If you need additional baskets, please contact our office. If you should move, please leave your recycling baskets at your existing property.

We hope that you will do your part and participate in the recycling program. To help you remember your recycling pickup days, we have prepared a calendar with just your recycling pickup days listed. Simply refer to your last garbage bill to see what recycling section you are in (A, B, C, etc.) and then click on the matching calendar on this page. Print the calendar and refer to it for the rest of the year for your recycling pickup days. If you do not have a recent bill available, please feel free to contact one of our customer service agents at the phone number or email listed below.

For more information about our recycle program, to request the baskets, or to see what day we visit your neighborhood, please contact one of our friendly customer service agents at 702-735-5151 and follow the voice prompts to Residential service. We may also be contacted by email at RSSNCustomerService@repsrv.com. Email requests will be responded to within three business days.

Additional Recycling Resources

Computer and Electronics Recycling – The Blind Center of Nevada
Lamp and Ballast Recycling
Earth 911 Recycling Information
How to Recycle Anything

All-In-One or Single-Stream Recycling

All-In-One™ recycling has been shown to dramatically increase recycling rates in cities across the country. Just toss
approved paper, plastic, cardboard, can and glass recyclables into your container and we’ll do the rest. Start recycling at your home!

Your Republic Services cart holds plenty of recyclables and is easy to wheel to the curb. Our comprehensive recycling process begins the moment we collect your discarded materials. From the curb, we collect the recyclables using automated trucks to safely pick up the materials and deliver them to a recycling center.

Then recycled items get processed, often using advanced sorting equipment– such as disk screens, magnets and optical sorters – to identify and separate different types of paper, metals and plastics. Sorted materials are then distributed to mills and manufacturers worldwide for re-manufacturing.

Disposing of household hazardous waste

Republic Services accepts many different hazardous items found around the house that are not permitted to be disposed of in your regular garbage. Our regularly scheduled drop off days gives our residential customers the opportunity to bring these items to a designated drop off location for proper disposal.

Accepted Items*: Paint thinners, solvents, paint removers, gasoline, diesel fuel, lighter fluid, waste oil, batteries, televisions, computers, pesticides, fertilizers, drain and oven cleaners, adhesives, pool chemicals, aerosol cans, prescription and non-prescription drugs**.

Limited to 15 gallons of liquid or 40 lbs of household waste per customer.

* Not Accepted: Explosives, ammunition and pressurized gas cylinders
** Prescription medication must be ground up and mixed with kitty litter, sand or coffee grounds in order to be accepted.

Drop Off Locations:

Henderson Transfer Station
560 Cape Horn Dr
Henderson, NV

Recycle Center
333 W Gowan Rd
North Las Vegas, NV

MGM Resorts Green Advantage

MGM Resorts International is committed to being a leader in environmental stewardship, bringing value to its shareholders and the communities in which it operate. Created to increase the sustainability of the company, Green Advantage is MGM Resorts environmental responsibility platform that focuses on reducing our consumption of the planet’s limited resources through innovation, education and efficiency.

Green Advantage ensures that MGM incorporates environmentally responsible practices that effectively lower its carbon footprint throughout all operations. They believe that a greener business is a better business.

To achieve its sustainability goals, MGM has focused its efforts on five core areas that contribute to its footprint:

Energy & Water
Green Building
Waste & Recycling
Supply Chain
Outreach & Education

These five core areas drive continuous improvements and the result is hundreds of best practices have been implemented and MGM Resorts properties have reduced annual emissions of CO2E by more than 100,000 metric tons.

MGM Resorts Corporate Sustainability Highlights:

Over the past five years, MGM Resorts has achieved total savings of more than 300 million kilowatt hours of electricity, 500,000 MMBtu of natural gas, and have saved 1.9 billion gallons of water
As a result of our best practices, MGM Resorts properties have reduced annual emission by more than 100,000 metric tons of CO2E
MGM Resorts has achieved an overall recycling rate of 37.9%
14,000 tons of MGM Resorts’ food waste was either composted or used as animal feed a local farm in 2011
MGM Resorts’ recycling programs help meet the needs of our local schools. A “Teacher Exchange Program” provides unused meeting materials for use in local classrooms.

View MGM’s Corporate Sustainability Report and Corporate Social Responsibility Report.