Restive State

I know it has become cliche to be "green." Even the stars, like Leo among others, have gone green. Funny thing is, is that I've always felt this way. But unlike them, I'm actually trying to change my habits to reflect this better "greener" me. I figured as good of a place to start would be transportation. So as an experiment, I'm logging my mileage by different forms to transport, just to see what 1 person can do. There's 3 modes in my life right now...

The Totals this week:
Car: 52 miles...or close to that
MAX: 52 miles, as close as I can figure/map it.
Bike: 10 miles for work + another 12 for fun.

the end for the moment...

part 2...

Now figure that usually, if I drive each way to work, by Google Maps, it is 11.7 miles, round trip. That makes it 70.2 miles, just to commute to work. Now figure with an average of 28 mpg, that's the equivalent of 2.5 gallons. which at current prices works out to about $7.70. Or to figure it by the federal mileage rate of $0.44/mile, it's $30.89. The funny thing is, time is not that big of a deal. I used to leave for my 19:00 shift no later than 18:15, making it to work about 18:45, stressed out from the drive. Now, I leave at 17:50 and roll into work about an hour later, but no stress and feeling good from the ride. It's not a bad trade-off.

Now I know that 70 miles a week is nothing. We used to put on over 1,500 miles a month (more like 2,000) between my wife and I. We've dropped that to well under 1,000, probably into the 500-700 range. Now comes the fun part. Using figures for greenhouse gas emissions found in this paper, the average passenger car produces 5.5 metric tons of emissions a year. This is based on a weighted average for miles per gallon (22.1mpg) and miles driven (12,000/year). So based on these numbers, we were producing anywhere from 687 to 916 kg of GHG a month, which roughly works out to 8.2 to 11 metric tons a year. Now dropping to only 700 miles a month, reduces our emissions by approximately 4.4 metric tons of GHG a year. That's nearly the equivalent of 1 average passenger car, so in effect, we've taken 1 car off the road. And that's not even including other things that we have started to try to do. I know that the math is inexact, but I'm looking at ballpark here.

The point is, we're just one family. You don't have to make a huge sacrifice to change, you just have to try. So in honor of Earth Day, here's an article to help you get started: Ten First Steps Toward a lighter, more sustainable lifestyle. (via Lifehacker)


It's not much, but it's a start.

We'll see what next week brings.

Yeah, Spidey 3 is getting the hype, but I've always been a fan of John McClane.

Tom