Welcom to I.Am.Eco.
As the editor of Material Profits, with a keen interest in renewable energy and environmental technology, I've embarked on a journey to become more carbon friendly. It's an individual war against fossil fuels. In a step by step process that you'll be able to follow along via this blog, I'll be cutting my CO2 emissions.
The first step is to find out how much CO2 I make. My first rough estimate - calculated with a carbon footprint calculator found on Wired Magazine - totalled my CO2 at 20.18 tons a year.
This week, I'll be breaking down that figure and finding out where all that CO2's coming from.
Here's the first finding:
Oneway trip to work: 9.4 miles
Car: Kia Sportage 4x4; 11-gallon gas tank
Fuel economy: 19.5 miles per gallon
Fuel use per oneway trip: 0.48 gallons
For a five-day work week, I'd be using 4.8 gallons of gas. That equals approximately $13.78 a week, using the $2.87 a gallon price for the station nearest my home.
This doesn't include trips to the grocery store, etc. I'll be tracking those as well. For example, Monday, I had a television interview 0.7 miles from my office. Roundtrip, 1.4 miles was added to my daily commute total of 9.4 miles to equal 10.8 miles driven on Monday.
Now, for my car, at 20mpg, my CO2 emissions equal one pound per mile. That puts my total for Monday at 10.8 pounds of CO2.
Tomorrow, we'll talk about CO2 emissions from home energy needs.
S.R. Nunnally
Editor, Material Profits
