I'm getting greener - but there's still a long way to go.

Since today is Blog Action Day, it seems like a good day for a post I've been meaning to write for a while now - what my family is doing to reduce our impact on the environment, and what else we can (and should) add to the mix.

I should probably admit right off the bat that I'm not doing enough to minimize my effect on the environment. I tend to suffer from inertia sometimes, and if something hasn't been made easy for me to do, I tend to not do it. That might not make me all that different from many (most) Americans, but it's still not good. While we were living in Honolulu, we didn't do much more for the environment than participate in our local curbside recycling program. We sat down and talked about that as a family before we left Hawaii, and decided that we'd try to do more when we got to Texas.

Here's what we've managed to do so far:

1: The New Car

When active-duty families move, the military only pays to ship one vehicle. (Efforts to get the military to pay to ship two have been shot down by the Bush administration each of the last six years, for reasons of economy.) This means that like most military families, we sold one car before leaving Hawaii, and bought one when we got to Texas. Our new car, which my wife uses for her 20+ mile one way commute, is a Prius.

In the interests of fairness, I should probably note that the environment was actually a secondary reason for the choice of a hybrid. When my wife returned from Iraq in April, she was (and remains) very angry. One of the manifestations of that anger was a determination to reduce fuel consumption as much as possible.

2: Recycling

Unlike Hawaii, our current apartment doesn't offer curbside recycling. As a result, one quarter of our (very small) laundry area is occupied by a five-foot high stack of plastic bins, which are used to sort the recyclables into the categories required by the drop-off site we're using. (One box for mixed paper, one for cardboard, one for plastic, one for metal, one for glass.) We take the recyclables in once a week, combining the trip with other errands.

3: Bagging

We've purchased about 10 cloth bags, and try to remember to bring them whenever we go shopping. Right now, I'd say we're managing to remember about 75% of the time.

4: Light

Almost all bulbs in the house have been replaced with the ice cream cone-looking ones. The only exception is in the bathroom over the mirror, where they didn't work very well.

5: Heat

The thermostat was normally set for between 78 and 80 this summer. This winter, it will be set between 65 and 70.

Here are a couple of big areas where we're still coming up short:



1: The old car

Our new car is a Prius. Our old car is a Taurus. The fuel economy on the Taurus is impaired (beyond normal) by a need for maintenance that I've been postponing. We're not currently in a position where we can trade the Taurus in on something that's environmentally friendlier, but I will try to get the car a tune-up in the near future.

2: Carbon

We are nowhere near carbon-neutral. I've looked at purchasing offsets, but at the moment we can't afford enough to bring ourselves near neutrality. My wife has an extensive commute (we live far from her work in order to be somewhere affordable that has a quality educational system for the kids). We also do a lot of travel to see family (although that mileage has dropped off extensively now that we're back on the mainland). We're talking about shifting some of our charitable contributions next year in order to free up funds for carbon credits, but realistically that's a way off.

As you can see, we're doing better than we were, but we're a long way from the ideal. We're going to try to keep improving as time goes on. Hopefully, we won't be alone in that effort.