No Impact Week Day 6: Focus on Water

So we’ve talked about consumption, trash, transportation, food, and energy. Friday’s focus was on water.

Water consumption is something we rarely think about, at least here in the East. Water is relatively inexpensive and just magically comes out of the tap. However, using water is putting significant strain on our aging infrastructure. You know what happens when it rains a lot in a large city like New York? Sewer and sewage over flow – YUCK!

Wars have been fought in other parts of the world over water, and as our climate begins to change people are already beginning to fight over water rights here in the United States – especially out in California, and the mid-west.

We can avoid such conflict (and escalating costs) if we conserve and walk a little lighter on the earth. There are lots of things you can do with very little effort to lower your water consumption. We followed just a few of the tips and have lowered our water consumption by half. It’s pretty amazing.

No Impact Week Day 5: Focus on Energy

Ok so we’ve talked about consumption, trash, transportation, food and Thursday’s focus was energy.

The idea is to unplug completely or as much as possible. I did a quick audit of the house and unplugged all our vampire energy suckers. For me this included:

• A stereo system
• Some  nightlights in unused rooms
• The coffee maker
• A few chargers

Since we are both working from home it is impossible for us to completely unplug, but we did our best to reduce our electricity consumption throughout the day. I avoided the television and only turned it on for prime time premier fall shows. (Love me my Grey’s Anatomy – though I must admit this time it was a bit meh.) We took a hard look at our energy consumption two years ago and made some small and some significant changes, and have been enjoying significant energy savings ever since.

No Impact Week Day 4: Focus on FOOD (yum!)

So we’ve talked about consumption, trash, transportation and today’s topic is FOOD! I am very excited about this as food is one of my favorite things.

The No Impact Project asks us to change out eating habits, whether its to cut back on meat consumption, go vegan, eat organic or eat more local foods.

No Impact Week Day 3: Focus on Transportation

So we’ve talked about consumption and creating (and not creating) trash. And yesterday the focus was on transportation.

The average American spends 1,000 hours behind the wheel each year – what would you do if you had all that time back? Or even better, that time was overlapped with your meditation/me time or your time at the gym. You’d be the most relaxed, in-shape person in the world!

No Impact Week Day 2: No More Trash

So today is Day 2 of No Impact Project’s carbon cleanse week and today’s challenge revolves around trash. Trash is something few of us think about. It goes in the bin, leaves your curb and then goes away. You never see it again. Well it has to go SOMEWHERE and often that means in a landfill, or worse our rivers and streams and then the ocean. We can’t fill the land forever – we’ll run out of room. Creating trash also uses finite resources, reducing it is a good idea.

If you put yourself on a trash diet so to speak (haha I crack myself up) you’ll find what a throw-away society we have become. We throw away napkins and silverware, coffee cups and papertowels, candy wrappers and soap containers. It’s crazy really. And many of the items we throw away we use for ten minutes or less.