This Year's Winner: Don't Flush Good Water After Bad

In an address to the nation in 1977, President Jimmy Carter called the energy crisis the "moral equivalent of war." Several years later, Carter wrote in a magazine article that the attitude of the American people concerning conservation had changed.

"Maybe our efforts have engendered a spirit of common purpose and sacrifice that will be adequate to meet new crises -- if we remember that the war is not over," he wrote.

There are lots of folks who know the war isn't over and are doing their part to waste less, be it energy, water, food or another resource. They get that each individual effort is important to the cause. And it was those people I wanted to hear from in soliciting entries for my Penny Pincher of the Year contest.

Take, for example, Ray Wong and his family, who live in El Cajon, Calif. They've made going green a family affair. They've purchased energy-efficient products throughout their home. They recycle everything they can. Most important, the Wongs are raising children who know how to conserve. "The thing that really lets us know we're making a difference is when we hear our 3-year-old, Kristie, say to our 6-year-old, 'Kevin, don't use too much water!' as he's washing his hands before dinner."

Efforts to waste less were common to many of the entries. One of these landed Amy Haden of Scottsville, Va., the $25 cash prize for third place in this year's contest.

Haden, who works in a large office building in Charlottesville, places buckets next to the coffee makers in her building so she can collect coffee grounds and other food waste. She takes it to her small cottage for her compost and chickens.

"I bring home about 50 pounds of trash every week," Haden said.

Her chickens get to eat any leftovers she finds in the coffee grounds. Haden said that for the extra effort, she saves a few hundred dollars or more a year by not having to buy compost, mulch or as much chicken feed.

It was also an effort to conserve at the office that earned Shirley Orth, a nurse from Del Mar, Calif., the second-place prize of $50.

As part of a workplace "go green" effort at the Mission Valley Outpatient Surgery Center, Orth and some other nurses were trying to find a less-wasteful alternative to the kidney-shaped plastic basins they use when preparing patients for surgery.

The intravenous supplies were brought to each patient in a separate basin. "Afterward, we would routinely dispose of each of these because of possible blood contamination," Orth said. "These are nonbiodegradable, and we were disposing over 500 a month into our landfills."

One day, Orth was removing intravenous tubing from its container and realized that at the bottom of the IV set was a small tray that could be used to hold the supplies, she said. She proposed that the center substitute these trays for the kidney-shaped basins.