The Low-Carbon Diet: a practical guide to reducing personal carbon dioxide emissions

The environment is in the news a lot these days. Most of the work needs to be done through government, as it doesn't involved individual actions. However, the fact that we also need to change our lifestyles is clear. I find though that most suggestions are generalized. They don't give me all that good an idea on what I'm doing right (in terms of my "carbon footprint" discussed in this article) and what I'm doing wrong. I really loved I really loved The Low-Carbon Diet (or how to lose half a tonne in just one month) because it was so clear and has so many good ideas.

It starts you off with the "average" carbon footprint. You then deduct from that footprint what you are already doing (so that you can know what your footprint is). Then you can go through the list again and see where you can change things...both large and small to reduce your carbon footprint.

I knew that my footprint would be somewhat smaller than most because I don't drive. I found though that a lot of other little stuff I was doing helped. Such as turning off my stereo and my amp and DVD when not in use).

My overall score before working on reducing my footprint was 5958.6 which almost puts me at the novice diet. There were also a lot of things that looked fairly easy to improve on, which is part of why the article impressed me. It also gave me an idea of how much certain things would help. I don't like fluorescent lights much...but I will likely change one or two lights now.

There were a lot of things I would have never thought of...like turning off my second phone charger when I'm not using the phone (since the first will broadcast anyway). It's a good exercise in looking at what you are doing right to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions you are creating---but more importantly it has a practical list on how to reduce them, as well as giving an idea of what the weight of different choices makes on our footprint.

And there is a list of treats you can have if your diet is doing well (and I already used one of those)

So what is your carbon footprint? And which suggestions on the list did you find the most useful?