Day Two: 50 Things You Can Do

So it's day two. I've successfully calculated my own personal 'carbon footprint' and I'm ready to take on the world! Not that it's that easy, of course.

Those of you who may follow my Twitter feed (@c02neutralproj) may know that I already hit a small hurdle this morning. The mission: to get into the city centre to buy one item (a bike pump) without the need for cars, buses or public transport. Now, I used to walk to work everyday and it never bothered me, but faced with an ominous, heavy gray sky and seeing the bus, which stops virtually outside my house, every hour made my 'lazy gene' kick in, and I very nearly succumbed. You'll be glad to hear that I did not take the bus, and I did indeed cycle - and I feel all the better for it!

So now, new bike pump in hand I feel a renewed sense of 'eco-pride' (if there is such a thing) and am ready to get on with living the environmentally friendly life I've subscribed to. As a good start my partner came home yesterday, from a course of renewable energy, with, low and behold, a leaflet called: '50 things you can do to lead a more sustainable lifestyle' - my project, it seems, has the backing of the Powers That Be, or something like that. The list is mostly very achievable with things like: take showers instead of baths, turn your thermostat down by 1 degree and change to energy efficient light bulbs. These are all things that I am either already doing, or can easily fit into my lifestyle so, you know, kudos for me. You can find the full list of 50 on my page '50 Things' here, so you don't have to read through pages and pages of bullet-points in this post. Suffice to say, of the 50 things, I reckon I can easily fulfill at least 36 of them, but that does still leave me with a heinous 14 that either do not really apply to me, or are unachievable at the moment (install Solar Panels, for example - I do not have the cash for that right now).

One thing I have come to notice in all my research is that this whole 'environmentally friendly' lark really is a lot more complex than you might think. I stumbled across this video from the blog Every Small Thing and it just goes to show how you may think you're doing something beneficial for the environment, but in actual fact you're not helping at all. You'll never look at a paper towel in the same way again.

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