Roblog was discussing energy waste on his blog the other day and it got me to thinking about my own carbon footprint. I decided to do a test to see how much my daily life impacts the planet. [1]I took several as none of the free tests were really 100% related to me. I knew I’d get dinged for all the electricity I use to power my plethora of gadgets. What I didn’t know was how much of an offset I’d get from recycling and my lack of yearly transportation costs.
My househould usage was the highest. No brainer there. I factored in my roommate here as well. We don’t have a choice in some areas like types of appliances, insulation, etc. However, we do use energy saving lightbulbs vs the plain old power mongers. We turn off lights and appliances not in use. We also recycle quite a bit. Being in SF, it tends to be easier to heat/cool our apartment so we save there too. Even with all my power hungry gadgets, we were below the national average.
Neither of us own cars however, I do own a motorcycle. Even rounding up to 50 gallons a year, I’m way way below the national average. Hell 50 gallons is one month for most folks with cars. I don’t fly much so my impact here was also very low. My roomie tends to fly a lot more than I do but that doesn’t translate to communal costs so I didn’t include his flight time. I usually take 3-4 trips a year max.
All in all, I’m less than half the national average. I have to admit I’m happy about that. I know it tends to be easier here so I can’t take all the credit. I discovered there is still room for improvement. I never considered how much effort was spent removing food/scraps from drinking water. Decomposing food breeds all kinds of nasty micro-beasties and that takes energy to clean. Growing up in the country, I never even considered the impact discarded food would have on my waste water. I guess it is time to start recycling our food waste as well. We have bins for it so it’s not even an inconvenience.
What is your footprint? Maybe it’s time to look at how you can improve that.
References
| ↑1 | I took several as none of the free tests were really 100% related to me. |
|---|
We don’t have recycling in the country. There are no recycle bins available. We do however recycle clothes and junk. Garage sales and giving away clothes you don’t wear to goodwill is very popular where I am from.