Holy moly! Carbon footprint calculators are about as enthralling to use as my bathroom scale. The latest one I tried was last week at my daughter’s school in the Tread Lightly Caravan. The calculator predicted that, despite my worm farm, weekly organic box of fruit and veggies, home-grown veggies, four chooks and low, shivering-in-winter electricity bill, we will need 3.8 earths to sustain our current lifestyle. That’s not ONE earth, but nearly FOUR!
The main culprits? Apparently our wood-burner didn’t fare so well. Eating take-aways even occasionally doesn’t cut it if we are throwing away four to eight plastic containers at the same time. And driving a petrol-driven car for two hours each week makes us bigger carbon gluttons than the average person in the UK. Yikes.
I did try cheating a bit by re-doing the calculations about eight times, tweaking my answers to drive for only twenty minutes a week and only fly in an aeroplane for two hours, but to no avail. One earth won’t do for us.
So here’s what we are trying for starters:
1. To scoot home from school on scooters instead of driving. That’s 25 km of exercise per week sorted.
2. To use the train to visit the city.
3. Turning off plugs at the wall, for all appliances.
4. Using cold water washes in the washing machine.
5. Absolutely, absolutely stick to our policy of only buying second-hand for all household items. Like this cute designer jacket I picked up at Savemart, my favourite clothing store in the world.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/feb/19/carbon.web
A great article on reducing household waste:
10 Tips for a Zero-Waste Household
No comments:
Post a Comment