40 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR CARBON FOOTPRINT

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HOW CAN YOU REDUCE YOUR CARBON FOOTPRINT?
(With a special thanks to Time Magazine, April 9, 2007)


Under the Bush administration, the United States remains one of the most significant countries in the world not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol - the international treaty on climate change, assigning mandatory emission limitations for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. (As of December 2006, a total of 169 countries and other governmental entities have ratified the agreement.) Yet the U.S. is the largest single emitter of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. And consequently, the U.S. is one of the biggest contributors to global warming.


While President Bush seems to resist most efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions until China agrees to do the same, what can we, as individuals, do? What can YOU do? We are going to look at 40 ways you can reduce your carbon footprint on the personal level. (If you can think of any other ways to reduce your personal carbon footprint –send an email to Julie@JayAndJulieOnline.com and we may add it to our list.)


If you care about our future, if you are a true patriot, please make sure you walk away with at least one or two simple ways to reduce your personal carbon footprint, save money, protect our environment and our country for our children, and do your part to reduce our dependence on the foreign oil that finances terrorism.


1. Of course you can seal windows and doors with weather stripping to keep the cold winter winds out and the summer air conditioning in...

2. But here is one item that you may not be aware of: Reduce your meat consumption. The international meat industry produces 18% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, much of which comes from the methane released by cattle and the nitrous oxide in manure. It seems Ronald Reagan was right about cow farts. Well, methane has a warming effect 23 times as great as that of carbon, while nitrous oxide is 296 times as great.

3. Insulate your garage and attic.

4. Reduce direct sunlight into your home – the setting western sun may make some rooms very uncomfortable and fade fabrics and rugs. Draw the shades in the late afternoon. Near our hottest western window we planted a tall crape myrtle – in the summer it provides shade and beautiful flowers, in the winter it loses its leaves and allows the setting sun to warm our home.

5. Open a window instead of running the A/C. Take advantage of cross-ventilation. If you have a security system that uses magnets on the windows, consider buying some extra magnets and place them so that the bedroom windows can be raised six inches – enough to allow cross ventilation, but not enough to allow a bad guy to enter; and if a bad guy were to try to raise the window, the alarm would sound. This extra ventilation allows us to keep our air conditioning off two extra months during the year.

6. When your incandescent light bulbs burn out, replace them with compact fluorescents (CFLs) or the new LED bulbs. OK – they may be more expensive, but they last longer, and they can be wonderful Christmas gifts to give to the person who has everything or to give to the person who can barely afford their electric bills. CFLs use one-fourth the electricity spent in an equivalent incandescent bulb and they generate 70% less heat than incandescent lights.

7. If you own a business you can illuminate your parking lots and areas with LEDs (light emitting diodes). They use very little electricity and last almost forever, and they are less vulnerable to vandalism.

8. Use a clothesline or take clothes out of the dryer as soon as they’re dry – don’t run the dryer more than you have to.

9. Recycle your clothes – go to www.Patagonia.com/recycle to participate in their garment-recycling program. Or give old clothes that no longer fit (yes diets and exercise do work) to the Salvation Army or Good Will.

10. Try to arrange a work-at-home policy with your employer, start perhaps with Fridays. If you get all of your work done, your employer may not mind. Ask. Give it a try.

11. Pay your bills online or use automatic deductions to reduce the use of paper and the gas to deliver the outgoing mail. We have our electric, water, cable TV, phone, credit card, insurance, association fee, newspaper, and internet provider bills deducted automatically from our checking account. It saves us several dollars a month in postage and about an hour of work each month. We still get statements in the mail; the only difference is that the statements now say “Do not Pay. Automatic Deduction.” And we receive our FPL statements electronically, further reducing the paper needed. Trees are saved from the paper mill so they can do their jobs of providing shade and cleaning the air.

12. Adjust your thermostat. Turn it up one more degree in the summer and down one more degree in the winter – to save some money, to help protect our environment, and to help protect America by reducing our dependence on the foreign oil that finances terrorism.

13. Encourage your employer to turn up the thermostat in the summer and allow employees to dress more appropriately for hot weather. Take of the tie. Or do you prefer to wear ties all the time? After all, what is a tie – it’s really just a glorified snot rag. Honestly. And in the wrong hands – it can be used as a noose against you by an attacker. Use your patriotism as an opportunity to be more comfortable at work.

14. Ask your business or office to assign a switch-off person to go through the office at the end of the day or the week to make sure that lights and equipment are turned off. And the central air can be put on a timer. Switch-off person? There must be a better name. If you give this switch-off person a good title, maybe we can get more volunteers. (Building Energy-Saving Monitor?)

15. Turn down the temperature on your water heater, or, better yet, be sure to get a solar water heater if your current electric or gas heater dies. In many parts of the country solar water heaters will actually produce hotter water than conventional heaters and they will significantly reduce your utility bills. Even up north, in the cooler climates, solar water heaters can be very effective, because the ambient water is much colder than it is in the south. There are new governmental rebates on these systems.

16. Check out energy tax breaks for cars: up to $2,600 for a Toyota Prius or Ford Escape; $4,000 for a Honda Civic GZX; and up to $12,000 in tax credits for a vehicle that runs on natural gas or methanol.

17. You can claim up to $500 in energy tax breaks for energy-saving insulation, skylights, exterior doors, and windows; up to $300 for a new heat pump or central air conditioner; and up to $2,000 for a solar water heater.

18. Run the dishwasher only when it’s full. This saves electricity and water.

19. Install low-flow adapters on showerheads – to reduce the amount of hot water used, which will reduce your electric bill, your water bill, and the amount of fossil fuel used to generate that electricity.

20. Look for the Energy Star label when shopping for appliances. Then comparison shop. Let your teenager do the math.

21. Wrap your water heater in an insulated blanket.

22. Get an energy audit of your home from your utility company – they’re usually free.

23. Recycle plastic grocery bags and avoid their use as much as possible. Only about 3% of the 500 billion bags distributed annually are recycled. They are typically made of polyethylene and can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade. Consider bringing reusable bags or boxes when you go shopping. Or at least bring your plastic bags back to the store to either reuse or recycle. Many grocery stores, like Publix, have plastic bag recycle bins by their entrances.

24. Speaking about recycling – be sure to recycle your plastic and glass bottles and metal cans – at home, school, and at work.

25. Buy locally grown, raised, and produced goods to reduce the need for trucking. Visit www.LocalHarvest.org to find farms and markets near you.

26. If you have enough room, plant a bamboo fence. It grows very quickly—as much as a foot a day—and it absorbs more CO2 than a rosebush.

27. Plan a green wedding: get your cake at a local bakery, order seasonal flowers, and buy wine from a local vintner.

28. One of my pet peeves is that blasted gas-powered leaf blower that the lawnmower man uses to blow grass clippings and dirt in our front door and all over the mulch in our flower gardens. They reach dangerous decibel levels and spew that gas stench into the air. Use a broom, get some exercise and be nice to your neighbors and the environment!

29. Buy more recycled products. Recycled paper uses 60% less energy to produce and each ton saves 7,000 gallons of water and 17 trees. Each of those trees could have filtered up to 60 pounds of pollutants from the air.

30. Resist buying items that use excessive packaging. There should be a law against packaging that requires special tools to open. I have often come very close to severely injuring myself while attempting to open certain plastic packaging. Send emails to excessive packaging offenders.

31. Carpool and combine trips. If you are going to the Post Office, do other errands in that neighborhood during the same trip.

32. Walk or ride a bike instead of driving. We rode our bikes to the Lone Star Steakhouse this week, with our dog Zoey happily tagging along. We had a great ride, pleasant exercise, wonderful meal in the outdoor patio, and we did not consume a single drop of gasoline or spew any exhaust into the air.

33. Make your own compost fertilizer rather than buying commercially-produced. The U.S. spends more than $5 billion a year on fossil-fuel-derived fertilizers that leak chemicals into the ground and accelerate the release of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide. Julie has her own personal mini compost heap. And it does not smell.

34. Keep your car in shape: a tune-up can improve your gas mileage 4% or more; replacing a clogged air filter can boost efficiency 10%; and properly inflated tires can increase efficiency 3%.

35. Wear socks and sweaters in the wintertime and throw an extra blanket on the bed instead of raising the thermostat.

36. And don’t sleep alone. Don’t shower alone.

37. Use fans during the summertime, and consider becoming a nudist in your home. How about that – nude patriots for America and Mother Earth!



And finally, let’s combine our carbon footprint tips with our computer tip of the week:

38. Manually or automatically turn off the computer when you’re not using it. Start > Settings > Control Panel > Display. Your screen saver is not an energy saver. They used to be necessary on old monitors which could actually burn the desktop image onto the screen. But today’s systems have some wonderful power saving features that can be accessed via the screen-saver tab. Some suggested automated settings: turn off the monitor after being idle for 10 minutes; put the system to sleep after 15 minutes of inactivity.

39. Look around your home for all the appliances and electronics that run all the time and consume electricity and generate heat whether you use them or not: DVD players, microwave ovens, CD players, VCRs, printers, fax machines, things with transformers… When convenient, unplug appliances and machines when not in use – most of them still draw power and generate heat, even when off. Julie unplugs the toaster and coffee maker when she is not using them, and any CD players that she doesn’t use everyday. This also protects them from lightning strikes. Also note that power strips are an easy way to stop electricity drain from appliances on standby (TV, stereo, vcr, etc). Click and its off or on.

40. Consider resetting your printer margins and using a smaller font to reduce the paper that you use, and the trees that are cut down and energy used to ship each of those products. In Microsoft Word XP/2003: File > Page Set up > set your margins > click the [Default] button. Maybe, if you are long winded, you may even choose to reduce your default font size from 12 to 11. Format > Font > make your preferred setting and then click the [Default] button.


Now we just gave you 40 tips to reduce your carbon footprint. Be a true patriot and reduce our dependence on the foreign oil that finances terrorism. Save our environment, and your money. Surely there are at least a couple of new things on this list that you can do. Write them down if you have to, and make your own personal resolution now to leave a better world for our children.