So, how did we do our first month?

The new windows won't be installed until mid-June, so I won't count those.

1. replaced 7 incandescent light bulbs with compact flourescents - that's about 700 pounds of carbon a year for the seven light bulbs we replaced.

2. drove smarter, including driving the speed limit - this should be saving about 20 pounds of carbon each week, so that's 1000 pounds over the course of the year!

3. turned off the heat (okay, that's really not fair since the weather has been warmer, and we probably would have done that anyway)

4. turned off the computer, monitor and modem when we leave the house and when we are asleep. I'm not just talking about shutting them down, but actually turning them off so that no lights are glowing. (Confession: this is surely why the modem switch broke. So, now we unplug the modem when we want to turn it off.) Appliances like microwaves, computer monitors, TVs, etc. use electricity even when they are off! Basically, if there is a light still glowing, or clock displayed, the unit is sucking energy. Same goes for your cell phone charger -- if you leave the charger plugged in even when you are not charging the phone, it continues to draw energy. As much as 5% of energy use in our homes is this so called "vampire" energy. We would turn off the TV & VCR too, except then we would have to reprogram them every day. Hmm. Maybe if we turned them off and left them off...?!

5. converted more of the yard to native plants (replacing turf grass) and planted three bushes (Nannyberry). I need to find actual statistics about how much carbon we are sequestering due to our native landscaping.  The link above is to an article about the benefits of converting city landscapes to native plants. There are two main ways that native plants (versus lawn) provide a benefit:

   a) the roots are much deeper, which means that the plants' ability to sequester (trap) carbon in the ground is much greater than shallow rooted plants like turf grass.

   b) less lawn mowing. Lawn mowers are notoriously dirty - they emit dozens of chemicals and contribute to both carbon in the atmosphere and groundlevel air pollution (like smog).

A department of energy article states: "one large sugar maple tree is capable of removing more than 450 pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in a year. At that rate, preserving approximately 30 trees per operating automobile in the United States would offset all U.S. automobile-related carbon dioxide emissions." I'm not sure how much carbon a two foot tall nannyberry bush sequesters in a year, but whatever it is, it is that much more carbon that isn't in the atmosphere.

Finally, I want to give us credit for using an electric lawn mower. The lawn mower mulches the grass as it cuts it,  does not release any fumes, and it is also very quiet. We have used electric lawn mowers for several years. While the electricity that they consume to recharge the batteries emits some carbon, it is much less than would be emitted by running a gas-powered lawn mower.

So, where does that put us now that we near the end of May? As I suggested at the start, this is only a beginning of a much longer journey. So, while we may not have actually hit 15% yet, we are making good progress, and have started some new habits that should stick for a lifetime of lower carbon living.

I think the biggest change this month has been the vast amount of information we have learned. And the realization that there is a lot more to learn -- so the journey continues!