Blog Update!
For those of you not following me on Facebook, as of the Summer of 2019 I've moved to Central WA, to a tiny mountain town of less than 1,000 people.

I will be covering my exploits here in the Cascades, as I try to further reduce my impact on the environment. With the same attitude, just at a higher altitude!

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Scorecard for Low Impact Week

Low Impact Week: June 1 - 7, 2007[Welcome, Good Morning America and Nightline viewers. Don't be shy, feel free to jump in on Low Impact Week!]

So, you want to participate in Low Impact Week to try out a few changes and see how hard it is. But, you also are curious to see if even just one week's changes make a difference.

Well, to help get you started on seeing what kind of effect Low Impact Week will make, it's probably a good idea to establish a baseline, so to speak, of your current impact.

First - decide which things you are going to do from the 7 areas of impact. Then - in the next week or so, calculate out how much you use/throw out, etc. for one week. For example (the links tell you how to do it):

1. Energy consumption: On day one of this "test week" read your meters for your electricity, gas, and oil (if you can). [Another way to eyeball it is to take your statements and divide by 4.3 to get approximately how much usage you have per week.] Take readings again at the end of the test week.
2. Water usage: Same deal - read your meter. They are generally under a plate in the sidewalk, but this may differ where you live.
3. Food habits: This is a little harder. Depending on the specific action item, say plastic bags, count how many plastic bags you acquire during the test week. Maybe count how many pre-packaged frozen food items you consume during the week. Count how many meals include meat or animal products.
4. Paper products: Try to keep a mental note as to how many paper towels you use this week. Again, this probably will mean counting or some sort of tally. Same thing with paper printouts.
5. Garbage output: How many bags of garbage did you throw out during the week?
6. Car usage: How many miles did you drive alone?
7. Do more: This is more about researching what other things you want to do. So, find out if you have an alternative energy plan available, find out how to remove your name from junk mail lists, see how many light bulbs you could replace, determine if you have the space and resolve for a compost bin or rain barrel.

See how easy this is? Well, if you don't mind a little counting and some subtractin'.

If this is still too much for you, I've created a very handy dandy little Google spreadsheet for you to view. There's also an Excel spreadsheet version if you want to save it for yourself.

Right now the Google spreadsheet is "view only", but if you all want to keep yourselves accountable to the world, I can make it open for you to edit and add your own values.

I'll be creating a similar style spreadsheet for the actual Low Impact Week so you can track what changes you are making. Let me know if this is something you want to be able to edit online so you can share with others what you are doing.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Brilliant - I am busy talking everyone into it!

Anonymous said...

Very cool! I will be joining you for low impact week!

Rainbow Momma said...

I saw Colin Beavan on GMA and his blog lead me here. I have to say that it is a breath of fresh air reading a blog like yours. My family uses lots of recycle/reuse/renew principals, but we're always looking for more. We will definitely be participating in Low Impact Week.

I've had a blog entry about this very subject in draft form for a long time ... perhaps now is the time to finish it up and publish it, eh?

I've bookmarked your blog and I will be back. Thanks!!

Anonymous said...

Synchronicity! I was just thinking that I need to record now what my typical resource use is per week. I have my past utility records from June, so I can see what I used last year as well as calculating current use. I may even get myself in gear and start up a blog in time for Low Impact Week. That would be a fun intro to blogging!

Skulleigh said...

I'm trying to do these things anyway, so I guess I'm in ;)

Anonymous said...

This is great. I'm going to attempt this and see how well we do and keep track on my blog.

ultravphunter said...

Hey, thanks. This looks really cool. This'll be a neat project for the week before finals!

Phelan said...

I can't join you. I can not reduce even more without going completely without. But hey, I wish all of you the best of luck.

Anonymous said...

I really like this idea and will be joining you. :)

Jen said...

Thank you for doing this--I've been talking to my 4 y/o about ways we can help the environment and this will be a great project for us to do together.

Minni Mum said...

Great idea! I'll be joining in, I'd love to see how much further we can reduce if we try *really * hard.

Rosemarie said...

this is excellent - thanks for sharing. I love your blog by the way. Keep it up!