Day 6: Continue to examine our driving behavior, Maintain/Reduce 55-mph speed for highway driving

I'm not sure how this is going to fly in Chicago but we will give it a try - actually with all the work on the Eisenhower we can't even reach 30 mph! - but the report states that fuel consumption could be reduced by 3.2% if drivers maintained highway speeds of 55 mph. If I'm reading the numbers correctly, I think this change reduces .7% of individual household emissions.

Goal: Maintain 55-mph on the highway

CO2 Savings/year: -.082

Cost/year: $0, actually if we reduce 21% of our fuel consumption at $3.68/gallon this step saves us$93

Calculations for buying used products

Circling back to my Day 2 post: our purchase of a used bike and how to calculate that into the equation.
Chris Jones, Staff Research Associate for Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at University of California, Berkeley responded to my inquiry. Here is what he had to say:

On buying used goods I believe it is reasonable to assume that emissions are related to price of good. If you buy a bike new, use it for a while and then sell it for 25% of the original price, then I believe it is reasonable for the first owner to assume 75% of the manufacturing emissions, and the new owner to assume 25%.

Manufacturing generally produces about 500g CO2 per dollar spent by consumers. So an average consumer product with a cost of $1000 produces about one half a ton of CO2. Producing a motor vehicle requires about 10 tons of CO2.  I haven't seen studies on LCA of a bike, but it is likely under half a ton of CO2.

In our calculator bicycles are under "entertainment" goods. You could try putting in different prices (on a monthly basis) to see what you come up with...actually, I just did this and I come up with about 0.2 metric tons for a $500 bicycle or 0.4 tons for a $1000 bike, or $400 grams CO2 per dollar. If you spent $100 on the bike, then that would 0.04 metric tons.

So what do you know, here I was thinking I was saving CO2 but in the marketplace it appears I'm just assuming 25% of the manufacturing emissions.  I'm still thinking about processing this as a net gain of zero because we perhaps saved this bike from abandonment in a landfill. 

Day 5: Routine Auto Maintenance

The report cites Routine Auto Maintenance as having the potential to reduce emissions by 8.6 million metric tons of carbon if 100% of the population maintains their automobile's recommended tire pressure, schedules routine oil changes, removes excess weight (which they subjectively guess 30% of cars carry at least 100 extra pounds), and  replaces oxygen sensors at recommended intervals.

Oil Change: we are overdue by 200 miles so I scheduled an oil change with Volvo
Tire Pressure: check
Excess Weight: Removed 2 toys and perhaps 1 pound of stale Trader O's from the backseat, no where near 100 pds.
Oxygen sensors: I had no idea what this even was.  If you care to learn more read here. When we take the car into Volvo, we will inquire about the last time our oxygen sensor was replaced.

Goal:  Check Tire Pressure, Schedule routine oil changes, remove excess weight and replace oxygen sensors, routinely

CO2 Savings/year: 0 (because we didn't make any changes)

Cost/year: $35 for oil change plus the cost of replacing an oxygen sensor TBD

Day 4: Continue to examine our driving behavior Reduce: Idling

Direct from the report sited above, "Recent survey data yield the estimate that 47% of drivers regularly idle unnecessarily in non-traffic situations." So today my husband and I are making a commitment to adopt the mindset to be aware of our idling and actually turn the car off in those situations such as waiting in line at the drive-thru, carpooling, warming up the car in the winter or getting stuck waiting for a train to pass. 


To calculate our carbon saved by reducing unnecessary idling I went to the The Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center who sites that 1 gallon of gasoline (I'm going to guess that would be the equivalent of gas saved by reducing our idling for the year) discharges 19.6 pounds of CO2 or .009 metric tons.

Goal: Reduce Idling

CO2 Savings/year: -.009

Cost/year: $0, actually at $3.68/gallon this step saves us a whooping $3.68 year

Day 3: Continue to examine our driving behavior Reduce: Carpooling

Because 1/8 of our family of 4's carbon footprint is based on our driving habits I'm honing in on transportation for bit longer than I'm guessing I will some other areas.

The authors of Household Actions suggest carpooling and chain tripping as as one of the most significant ways to potentially reduce emissions but also suggest in their report the behavioral plasticity to be relatively low.  They predict 5% penetration.  Let's see if we can be one of the 5% and inspire others to join in which will ultimately increase the percentage!

Today I found a friend to carpool weekly with for grocery shopping.  So once a week we will carpool and trip train, Trader Joes, Wholefoods and Walgreens.

Mapquest.com calculates a one way trip from my home to Trader Joes to be 2.05 miles.  Because my carpool buddy lives relatively close to me, and would be doing the same trip solo as well, we'll say we are cutting our household driving by 1/2 in this exercise so reducing 2.05 miles driven per week by grocery shopping carpooling.  Another baby step but one I know I can keep because it is small, yet it reduces our mileage by 2 miles/week or 104 miles/year.

Goal: carpool for weekly grocery shopping trip 1 day/week

CO2 Savings/year: -.06

Cost/year: $0, actually at $3.68/gallon this step saves us a whooping $15 a year if we alternate driving!

Day 2: Continue to examine our driving behavior Reuse: A bike

After I picked our younger son, P, up from preschool yesterday via bike I headed across town to meet up for a park play date.  It occurred to me I should start tracking the times (and our mileage) we bike instead of drive locally for errands, plans and such so I'll be picking up an odometer and crediting our footprint based on the same calculations in the post below.

Now here's the Reuse part of the equation. In order to be able to make it any substantial distance on our bikes it was time to graduate P from a baby seat on the back of my bike to a duck, extension, co-pilot, trailer what ever you want to call it.  Instead of buying a new one, I posted a wanted ad on our local mom's mail exchange and was able to purchase a used one.  We picked it up last night and it is brilliant!  So let's see what kinda of credit we get for reusing versus making a new purchase.

I spent some time google researching to see what kind of deduction I could apply for buying used/Reusing instead of buying new and didn't find anything pertinent to my situation so I have emailed The Nature Conservancy and the author of the Berkeley calculator to inquire if they can answer the question.  Let's see what they have to offer!

Goal: Buy a used bike for our preschooler instead of a new one

CO2 Savings/year: waiting to hear from the experts!

Cost/year: $0, actually we spent $25 for a $100 dollar bike so we saved $75!

Day 1: Start to examine our driving behavior Reduce: Driving

Day 1:  Start to examine our driving behavior.  We are a house of 4 that owns 1 car.  A 2001 Volvo V70 that the EPA calculates to get 21 MPG.  I guesstimated that we put about 20,000 miles on our car annually in the post below re:carbon footprint calculations.  In an effort to accurately measure our savings I am noting our odometer today at 108,233 miles.

fueleconomy.gov calculates that our driving pattern contributes 11.7 annual tons of CO2. That is 1/8 of our total  footprint. Every mile not driven will reduce our footprint by .0006 of a ton. Today I am committing to using alternative transportation (walking or biking) to our younger son's preschool two days a week instead of driving. This is a baby step but one I know I can keep because it is small, yet it reduces our mileage by 2 miles/day or 200 miles/year.  

Goal: walk to and from preschool 2 days/week

CO2 Savings/year: -.13

Cost/year: $0, actually at $3.68/gallon this step saves us a whooping $30 a year

Day 1: Earth Day 2010

What a great day to start this challenge.  I've been contemplating this "project" for a few months, so how fitting that yesterday, the day before Earth Day, I finally decide to launch.

Last night it occurred to me that I should calculate our household footprint on at least two other sites to make sure we are starting with an accurate carbon footprint baseline.  So this morning I used the EPA's Household Emissions Calculator which asked slightly different questions and results determined our household of 4 used 80,893 pounds of CO2 per year.

And then The Berkeley Institute of The Environment CoolClimate Carbon Footprint Calculator determined our household of 4's carbon footprint was 76 metric tons CO2e/year.

So to recap the variances, The Nature Conservancy determined our carbon footprint to be 92 tons of CO2/year, The EPA suggested 80,893 pounds of CO2/year and The Berkeley Institute of The Environment calculated 76 metric tons of CO2/year. I am going to take an average of the high and low calculations and mark our starting baseline to be 84 metric tons of CO2/year for our household of 4.

Besides our challenge to decrease our footprint daily with minimal expenses, it seems appropriate to have a "saved" target. I aiming for 40% saved so 365 days from today, April 22, 2011, our household's footprint will hover around 50.4 metric tons of CO2/year, less than half of US national average for a family of 4 based on reports from the National Conservancy.

Our Baseline

To start with I thought it best to attempt to calculate our current carbon footprint for a baseline.  To keep things simple I used The Nature Conservancy Carbon Footprint Calculator for our household of 4.  After answering a few quick questions, The Nature Conservancy predicted that our family's estimated emissions averages 92 tons of CO2/year.  I was pleased to see that we came in lower than the national average for a family of four which they calculated to be 110 CO2/year but drastically higher than the world's average of 22 CO2/year.