I've been over at Anoushka's blog trying to figure out with her on where to progress with this - the project stared at Simple Living, and you will find out what it's all about including the rules. So, after gaining the conversions for the NZ equivalents based on the US figures, this is my own audit of where we are currently standing. It has taken me about 6mths of slowly implementing more earth friendly ideas to what I was already doing. I still have a way to go to meet some targets though. However, with car emissions being the #1 reduction that all of us can do that currently has the biggest impact - I am pleased that we are looking very good in that area. There was no family holiday in the past year though, so that has had a positive effect on that number - as far as week to week use, I have not been overly conscious of reducing aside from my carfree Tuesday (which sometimes is allocated to another day of the week) - we just happen to live in a small town that I rarely leave.
1- Petrol - Tricky, I haven't included Simon's work travel since his job is as a rep, but we do occasionally use his car in the weekends so will include that. 94% reduction.
2- Power - last year we used 6973 kW, so well over the 10% allocation which puts us at 63% reduction. We don't use heaters, don't use hot water in washing machine/dishwasher - I do suspect our old upright freezer is the culprit and am thinking of ways of reducing this. We have recently replaced our 50 yr old hot water cylinder so that could also have been adding unnecessarily to the issue. I have just started switching my hot water cylinder off every day for 16hrs of the day. Heating for 8hrs provides adequate hot water - so will be interesting to see the results of doing that.
3- Heating - wood allocation only - have included in petrol section as per their calculations - n/a
4- Rubbish - 98% reduction - I weighed ours in at 2.5kg rubbish per week (one plastic rubbish sack every fortnight), also all non-biodegradable, so non-methane producing.
5- Water - room for improvement! 82% reduction . At the moment I don't recycle any water. We do run our washing machine and dishwasher every day (188 litres + 18 litres) - when dd is no longer in nappies it will drop by 2 loads a week. Kids only bath a couple of times a week with a shallow bath, dh and I shower every day but it's a low flow (just did a test) and for 5mins max (if that). But it's things like rinsing dishes, hand washing, cooking water etc that I could be more resourceful with I suspect.
6- Consumer Goods - I went through my visa accounts for the past 6mths and just doubled it (since I've been more concious of all of this since the beginning of the year). We're still only at 68% reduction though. I have included things required for house maintenance, paint, home car maintenance, bed for Danielle etc - mind you figures also include 3 of our own birthdays in that time and I also had a big book buying binge... This one is tough even though I thought we were doing really well.
7- Food - No idea, but definitely not the best it could be. I am hoping by growing our own veges (and plan on providing almost 100% of our needs) that will eliminate our current vege box delivery. We have gone 50% vegetarian (still too much dairy in our diets to be anywhere near vegan) in the past 6mths, not a lot of locally produced items where I live, so there will always be significant food miles involved. I do limit packaging and processed where possible - I think I need to pick a single parameter to stick to reducing rather than a % on total food as I have no idea. I'm happy just focusing on growing produce at the moment and cutting back on one or two more meat meals. Also, gluten free items are often made in Aussie - hopefully all shipped rather than air freighted though!
No comments:
Post a Comment