I started this blog in 2010 after reading an article by the National Academy of Sciences reporting results from a study indicating 33 specific household actions that will cut US carbon emissions by 123 million metric tons. I was inspired to step up to the plate and wanted to challange our family (and inspire others) to do our part. We made it only 17 days and then life ...(you know the story).


Fast forward three years: It's 2013 and I am re-inspired after attending three very eye opening films featured in our community's One Earth Film Festival. Our family is kicking off a new challange (more broad and perhaps less defined by a carbon metric) - to pursue one new action a day (for 365 days) that will positively affect climate change and sustainability. Let's see how far we make it!



Friday, April 23, 2010

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!
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