For the month of May, I will be documenting the steps that our household takes to reduce our carbon footprint. This is just a way to help illustrate how simple it can be to make small changes that when added up, make a large difference for the planet.

The first step in this project was to roughly calculate out current carbon footprint. There are various calculators available - I used the one that the Seattle Times newspaper set up as part of their Challenge.

So, what does our baseline look like?

First off, there are two people living in our house - me and my husband Tom. 
 
The photo is from a trip to New Zealand in 2005 - I'll cover the whole issue of travel in detail in a couple of weeks!

Our total carbon contributions are about 37,500 pounds a year. The average for a two person household in the US is 41,500. That puts us about 9% below the national average. But we are still going to do what we can to take it down at least another 15% by the end of May.

So, how does our household carbon footprint shake out in general:

 Our cars contribute a total of nearly 18,000 pounds of carbon to the atmosphere each year. this does compare favorably with the national average of 24,000 pounds a year for two cars (12,000 per car per year is the average). We have two cars that average 40 miles per gallon, which is good, but between the two of us, we put about 35,000 miles (combined) on the cars each year. We do not plan on buying a hybrid anytime soon, mostly because our mileage is good with our two Honda Civics, but also because of the cost. We would spend about $10,000 more to purchase a hybrid than a regular gas car. In the long-run, we believe that we can put those dollars to work in other ways now, and consider up-grading a car when we actually need to replace one - more on that in the coming weeks!

The next largest contributor is our heating bill. With a gas boiler, based on our monthly bills, just keeping us warm in the winter adds about 9,400 pounds of carbon each year. Again, this is below the national average of 11,000 pounds for a comparable situation. Our electricity use adds over 9,000 pounds, which is actually much lower than the national average of 16,000 pounds. I suspect, however, that since our electric company uses virtually no alternative fuels, our actual emissions are somewhat higher, since on average, most utilities do use some measurable percentage of alternatives like wind or hydroelectric.

The one area where we appear to be doing a really good job is in recycling our waste. We recycle as much as we can, so our contributions from our waste stream are about 1/2 of the national average -- 1100 pounds a year versus 2200.

So, there is our baseline.

In the weeks ahead, I'll explore these numbers a bit more deeply. I'll also talk you through our personal journey to reduce our carbon footprint, so we can all learn together.