Personal Efforts Towards Carbon Neutral Lifestyle

Alandi's carbon emissions. Today I checked our household emissions on the EPA site. Since so much happens in our small space, I counted Sadananda and myself each as one person, the temple as one person, the Gurukula as one person and the clinic as one person, since each of those entities uses rooms, utilities, water and laundry.

The good news: 50,173 lbs of CO₂ per year or 10,035 pounds of CO₂ per year per household member was approximately half of what an average American emits. Our simple lifestyle does make a difference.

The bad news: It doesn't make enough difference. That puts us at five tons per person per year, very far from an optimal goal of one ton per year. According to the EPA website, if we buy one hundred percent green energy, we get to less than one ton per person.

Other changes we plan for this year:

· Dry more of our laundry on racks/washing lines

· Replace those last, lingering incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents

· Look into retiring the landlady's old refrigerators and getting out own energy star refrigerators

Things we already do include turning the furnace all the way off at night, not using any form of air conditioning and having the sleep function enabled on the computer. And we use a carbon neutral server for our websites and email.

Best of all, walk, walk, walk! I do enjoy a pedestrian lifestyle.