Summary & Priorities
In the 2 years that I've now been actively assessing my environmental footprint, there are some key lessons I've learnt, and as a result an order of priority of actions has emerged for the reduction that that footprint.
When measuring energy consumption, I've tried to bring it all back to ‘grams of CO2 per day’, so that I can compare the benefits (and therefore priorities) of efforts across petrol, electricity, and domestic gas consumption. These ‘grams of CO2 per day' are based on our actual usage, not a theoretical 24 hour usage. So, even though changing a 60 watt light bulb to an 11 watt compact flouro sounds like a big reduction, it's not much impact if that light is only on for a hour or two each day.
I'm not saying my maths is perfect and some of the assumptions I've made may be incorrect; if so, please e-mail me and let me know so that I, and hopefully others, may learn from it. After all, that's what this site is all about.
In the 2 years that I've now been actively assessing my environmental footprint, there are some key lessons I've learnt, and as a result an order of priority of actions has emerged for the reduction that that footprint.
When measuring energy consumption, I've tried to bring it all back to ‘grams of CO2 per day’, so that I can compare the benefits (and therefore priorities) of efforts across petrol, electricity, and domestic gas consumption. These ‘grams of CO2 per day' are based on our actual usage, not a theoretical 24 hour usage. So, even though changing a 60 watt light bulb to an 11 watt compact flouro sounds like a big reduction, it's not much impact if that light is only on for a hour or two each day.
I'm not saying my maths is perfect and some of the assumptions I've made may be incorrect; if so, please e-mail me and let me know so that I, and hopefully others, may learn from it. After all, that's what this site is all about.
The following is in order of impact:
|
1.
|
Change to a more fuel efficient car; in this case a Prius. 15kg of CO2 per day
|
|
2.
|
Installed a 1.89kWh solar photovoltaic system. At least 6kg of CO2 per day
|
|
3.
|
Change to more efficient computer equipment. 4kg of CO2 per day
|
|
4.
|
Change to solar hot water. 2kg of CO2 per day
|
|
5.
|
Turn off appliances at the wall. At least 1kg of CO2 per day
|
|
6.
|
Changing to a more efficient UPS. 900g of CO2 per day
|
|
7.
|
Changing garden lighting to LED. 800g of CO2 per day
|
|
8.
|
Changing house lighting to CFL. 800g of CO2 per day
|
|
9.
|
Insulation for the aquarium. 700g of CO2 per day
|
|
10.
|
Turning off the washing machine at the wall. 150g of CO2 per day
|
The above list gives good credence to the mantra of REDUCE, reuse, recycle.
Supporting
This portion of the site is all about my pursuit to reduce the size of my footprint on the environment. I believe we've done serious damage to the planet, and I can't in good conscience continue to live the way I've been living.
So, here you'll find my endeavours with Energy (solar and wind), Water (rainwater and grey-water), and Transportation (hybrid vehicles, motorbikes and electric bikes) amongst others.
Enviro-Blog
Enviro-Blog
