The 'Five-Step Carbon Diet' slims down your carbon footprint

Everyone knows the best and easiest diet plan for losing weight. You eat less, eat healthier, and get some exercise.

These days, environmentally conscious people want to go on a different diet. They would like to reduce the size of their carbon footprint, or go on a carbon diet, if you will.

But it's not so easy to know the best way to do that. After all, a few years ago you didn't even know you had a carbon footprint, much less knowing that you needed to reduce the size of it.

Your carbon footprint is the amount of environmentally harmful carbon dioxide emissions you produce. These are produced through vehicle gas emissions, home waste, temperature controls on your home, and with other activities. The less carbon dioxide you personally produce, the better the environment.

BeGreen Carbon Offsets, a division of Green Mountain Energy Co., a leading provider of cleaner energy and carbon offset products, has devised a "Five-Step Carbon Diet" that provides steps to follow to help reduce the size of one's carbon footprint.

Most of these steps are already followed by the environmentally conscious, but this diet suggests ways to improve your environmental impact while following the steps you already follow.

Get real about recycling

Yes, sure, you already recycle. But does everyone in the family recycle properly, and do you recycle everything you are permitted to recycle? A visit to your community's Web site will likely inform you of everything you are permitted to recycle, and this information should be passed on to every member of the house who actually throws items away (go ahead, tell your teenage son, too).

A year's worth of proper recycling, over not recycling at all, would save 1,600 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions for a family of four, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The Web site Earth911.com can tell you where to recycle items not accepted by our community's recycling program.

Take it down a degree

The last person to go to bed at night turns out all the lights, right? You don't want to pay for electricity you aren't using, and you don't want to waste that energy, either. So ask the last person to go to bed at night to turn down the thermostat.

If you can drop the nighttime temperature in the house by three degrees (and take advantage of an extra blanket on the bed and warm fuzzy pajamas) the EPA says the family of four can save 140 pounds of carbon emissions a year. Similarly, a three-degree upturn on the thermostat at night in the summer saves another 160 pounds over a normal summer.

Swap for CFLs and save

Perhaps you have already made the switch to CFL lighting over traditional light bulbs, or perhaps you tried the early CFLs and didn't like the quality of light. Did you know that new technology has made the CFLs brighter, and that they produce a purer light? So try again, please. You can save 1,000 pounds of emissions over a year, and you also save money on your electricity bill.

Also, you can also find information on recycling or proper disposal of the CFLs (they have mercury inside them) by visiting your utility Web site, or going to Earth911.com.

"The good thing about CFLs is they last 10 times longer than traditional light bulbs and use a lot less electricity," said Gillan Taddune, chief environmental officer for Green Mountain Energy Co. "Electricity is the leading cause of industrial air pollution in the United States. Buying those and using them to their fullest extent is a good thing."

Skip a trip

This is a big one, and it takes some planning to pull off. But if you can cut down on any of your car travel, you can do a great deal to reduce your carbon footprint. The best way is to carpool to work. If you eliminate two 30-mile trips a month, you cut out 770 pounds of emissions, and again you save money, this time on gas.

Another way to cut your carbon footprint is to consolidate your car trips, making sure to travel from home to dry cleaner to bank to grocery store and back home rather than home to dry cleaner, home to bank and home to grocery store. It's better for the environment, less expensive and a wiser use of your valuable time.

There is one more idea, although it's more difficult for suburbanites than urbanites. But if you can walk to the grocery store or bank, give that a try.

"When gasoline prices were double what they are now, six months ago, I think people really started to pay attention because it cost so much to fill up your gas tank," Taddune said. "We found out how high gas prices have to go to change consumer habits. Now that the prices have gone down, I am hoping carpooling and saving on trips will continue."

Make the switch

This is a step that most Daily Herald readers cannot follow, simply because the choice is not available to them. In Naperville and St. Charles, it is possible to switch to an electricity provider that uses renewable energy sources.

While there is a nominal additional cost to using "green'' energy, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates a household of four people using 100 percent renewable energy for an entire year would reduce its carbon dioxide emission by 15,600 pounds. Occasionally, power companies conduct surveys on the subject of green power. If yours does, say "Yes, please."

"Right now, according to the Department of Energy, there are about 41 states that have these utility green pricing programs," Taddune said. "It does seem it is becoming more and more popular. The market is definitely growing and hopefully soon more of your utilities will offer that as an option."

Almost every idea presented above saves money as well as carbon emissions. Likewise, almost any reduction in the use of energy is a reduction in your carbon footprint, and again saves you money.

"What we try to show is that doing little things can really make a difference," Taddune said. "We have been around for 11 years and over that period our customers have helped to avoid over 4 million metric tons of CO. That is everybody doing something little. We hope over time we can find more people who want to join in and do something."

So make sure to use your dishwasher or clothes washer only when the load is full, turn off your computers or other electronic devices at night, carpool to all of your kid's activities, switch any outdoor lighting to solar, and try to reuse before you recycle.

Just like with a diet to reduce your personal weight, going on a carbon emissions diet will make you feel good about yourself.