Another New Year's Resolution - the Enviroment! (Step 1)

My husband and I have been slowly trying to reduce our impact on the environment, but I have decided that this year I'm really going to face this issue head on. I'm going to be posting tips on here about things you can do to reduce your energy needs, to clean up toxins in your home, and to cut back on your usage of our natural resourses.

The first step to getting a handle on the environmental issues that are literally choking this planet is to understand your part in hurting Mother Earth. While there are a number of ways that we all contribute to polluting the planet, one part of your contribution that you can easily tabulate is your Carbon Dioxide (CO2) output or "footprint". To get an idea as to your family's CO2 footprint, you can use the Climate Change Calculator on American Forests website (http://www.americanforests.org/resources/ccc/). If you do not know your annual usage for one of the emission sources, the calculator can fill it in with the national average for you. I did this yesterday to find out what my family's CO2 emissions were; below is the data I entered and what the calculator tabulated:
* Electricity: 12044 kWh/year (2006 total from electricity bill) = 18066 lbs CO2 = 27 trees
* Natural Gas: 993 Therms/year (2006 total from gas bill) = 11659.8 lbs CO2 = 17.4 trees
* Garbage & Recycling: used national averages = 7971.5 lbs CO2 = 11.8 trees
* Mower: 30 gallons of gas = 750 lbs CO2 = 1.1 trees
* Vehicle 1: used national average for minivan = 11210.7 lbs CO2 = 16.8 trees
* Vehicle 2: used national average for midsize sedan = 10168.3 lbs CO2 = 15.2 trees
* Air Travel: 5 flights/year (husband traveling for work) = 1824.9 lbs CO2 = 2.7 trees
** TOTALS: Annual CO2 emissions = 31.2 tons Need to plant 93.6 trees to negate

Needless to say, I was shocked. But, it's better that I know so that I can do something about it. And I will post here what I'm doing to help the environment - hopefully you can adopt some of the ideas yourself! Because we all want to leave our kids a beautiful planet!

Take Care,
Kara