Reducing Your Carbon Footprint

An inventory of household energy use is the first step to initiate change. Here are a few ways you can reduce your carbon footprint. Pre-rinsing dishes does not improve a dishwasher's ability to clean them. Skipping the wash before the wash, according to Consumer Reports, saves up to 76 liters of water per load. One load a day means 27,740 liters over the course of the year. Wash your dishes (non-phosphate soap) in a dishpan. When done, dump the water on a thirsty plant or tree outside. Buy local food as much as possible; up to 30% of our carbon pollution comes from food miles the distance food has been transported, by truck or air before it reaches us. People once ate seasonally but now you can buy fresh produce year round. Where do those mangos come from? To help reduce C02 emissions (released from trucks, airplanes, and cargo ships), it's best to buy food that's in season, organic, and grown locally. Watch the paper for our local farmer's market season.

During WW 2 Victory Gardens became an indispensable source of food because commercially canned goods were rationed. It is estimated that nearly 20,000,000 gardens were grown and about 40 percent of all vegetables produced in the U.S. came from Victory Gardens. Reducing our global footprint can be done!

A carbon footprint is a way to measure human impact on the environment measured in units of carbon dioxide, the amount of green house gases produced. Driving habits, sources of food, garbage generation, and the local area generates a rough estimate of how much land it takes to sustain a person.

Install a big barrel attached to your drainpipe that will collect rain water from your roof's eaves. Rain water is better for your garden, as the chlorine in city tap water can inhibit plant growth. Growing your grass longer will keep it greener and require less water than a closely mowed lawn. Water your lawn and gardens in the early morning. Replace a garden fence, instead of building a wooden fence, with a living fence. A living fence is a hedge or row of trees which can be pruned to maintain an appearance. Less expensive than a traditional fence it never needs to be painted. This saves money and time and keeps harmful chemicals out of the environment. Your local nursery can help you choose native flora.

Other ideas from local master gardeners include: using old nylons to support trailing plants: great tomato supports, place used carpet ( strips) between rows in the garden to cut out the weeds and keep moisture in, use a stack of old tires as a planter for potatoes. Start with just a couple of tires and then add a tire, l keep garden gloves and favorite hand tools, instead of landscape fabric, use layers of old newspaper under wood chip mulch to kill sod and establish a no-mow area around trees, Plant a tree, any tree, Plant a tomato, any tomato, anywhere. These are only a few ideas to think about how we live with the environment.In my opinion gardening is the best of them. Good gardening practices will give you a sense of accomplishment, help clean the environment, save money, and time and decrease the human footprint.