08-012

i recently took a carbon footprint quiz to see how good [hopefully] or bad i was treating the planet based on my lifestyle. the last time i did one of these it was for a class in sustainable building and i needed 5.3 planets to sustain my way of life. yikes! well after a few changes i decided it was time to retake it. i scored 3.9 planets this time. not great, but a vast improvement over the last time. major changes to reduce my footprint? converted from an omnivore to an almost vegetarian, drastically reduced the number of miles i drive from over two hundred a week to right around 50 [i'll be taking the train to school this semester], and i took the snow tires off my car and am getting close to 40mpg. the quiz is rather general and doesn't account for a lot of things like how much you eat in a weekly basis, just that you eat; natural gas was the only option for home heating [i use oil and pellets] and it's calculated in dollars, not gallons or pounds; power consumption was also in dollars, not kWh; there is no place to input gallons of water, just that you use water; and no credits for using rainwater or for composting [the compost is potentially a big ticket item too considering how many tons of waste a family can stop from being trucked to a landfill]....i'm assuming that all of the answers are based on a national [or global] averge. it would be nice to have a more accurate way of caculating these values but it's still a great indicator and motivator. well, i have my work cut out for me - i'd like to drop my consumption even more and get below two planets by next year this time so wish me luck.

08-011

OK, time for a rant. I love this planet, I love it so much that I have really made a conscious effort to change my lifestyle to be more environmentally responsible. My diet has changed to be a fishetarian (right; no cows, no pigs, no chickens, just good ol' veggies and some fishies) and I have plans to become a strict vegetarian again, my driving habits have changed drastically (from drive like your rear is on fire to grandma style), I compost, I collect rainwater for our landscaping, I recycle EVERYTHING, I'm trying desperately to find a reel mower on the cheap, and thinking about retiring the snow blower I bought last year, despite a terrible and painful lower back "issue", and wax up my trusty shovel this winter, the wife and I bought a pellet stove to use renewable resources for heating, last year our thermostat didn't go over 64 ALL WINTER, CFL's in every socket, I forgo any type of disposable bag whenever it's practical, and lastly I try to eliminate products with useless packaging. This brings me to my rant. I ran across the street yesterday to grab lunch (I try not to, but the A/C in my office is set to refrigerator temp (yes, another rant, but for another day. Let's just say that I have NO control over it))...anyway: lunch. I needed soup and a jaunt out on a perfect day to defrost myself. As I'm paying the lovely folks I notice that they have added fresh fruit to their menu. Wonderful!! I love apples and oranges. Wow, those apples look REALLY, REALLY shiny. Oh, that's why, they are wrapped in cellophane! WHAT!?!?? As if the wax they dip the things in wasn't good enough? Oh, and that wonderful skin that nature invented? Apparently that is useless too. To add to it all these things were already under glass so it's not like they would collect a ton of dust and that glass would certainly be a deterrent for all those folks that like to pick their noses then touch every piece of fresh fruit in the place. Why-o-why would anyone find the need to wrap a perfectly good piece of fruit in a toxic sheet? [deep breath] OK, I feel better now.