Going Green – Hydro update

HA!!! got a call from Hydro last week… they wanted to know if everything was ok. Turns out my electricity consumption is down by about 67% of what it was last year.

Making progress

Going green – my footprint

I’ve calculated my footprint using two calculators. This one from climatecrisis.net and this one from bp.com. I scored 16.75 tons on the first and 16.00 on the second… pretty crappy seeing that the national average is 11 tones.

I’m going to use the lower number as my guide, easier to divide by two

So… my target Carbon Footprint for this time next year is: 8 tons

Going green

Happy Earth Day!

I’m gong to be starting my new job on May 5th and since I’ll be working in town again, I figured I would take this opportunity to get in better shape and maybe help the planet out a bit in the process. But I’ve been trying to think of what’s the best way to tell whether or not I’m actually making a positive impact on the planet (and on me). I’ve come up with two ways.

The first: I’m going to measure my Carbon Footprint before and after, I’ll try and updated that monthly as I get the data needed (might even have some swanky graphs).

The second: Money. Let’s face it, most of us are coin operated, so. I’m going to keep track of my monthly expenses as related to the changes I’m making in my life and for the planet. For example, I’m going to keep track of my monthly gas expenses for the car, electricity as well as gas & water bills. If I spend any money to “get green” I’ll record that as well, I’m thinking things that would count here are; a new furnace, clothes drying line, new bike, etc.

I’m curious to see if going green is actually going to cost as much as i thought it would. Don’t get me wrong, the changes that I’m going to make aren’t drastic, I’m not going to go off the grid or anything like that. But I’m curious to see if I can cut my Carbon Footprint in half without incurring very much expense.

Here are just some of the things I’m going to try doing or at least look into:

• Bike to work as much as possible
• Update my furnace from the original Circa 1965 one to a high efficiency one
• Replace the 4 remaining incandescent light bulbs in my house with the compact florescent variety
• Not use my dryer if the weather is nice and I can hang my clothes to dry (I’m doubtful about this one since laundry is one of my favourite things to do anyway)
• Other things as I think or read about them

Stay tuned….