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!