About The Blogger

I can't say author - I'm not published!

Leslie is a 42 y.o. woman living in upstate NY with her parents as she continues to recover from an invisible disability of vestibular neuritis.

She has spent her life being a curious Jack Of All Trades, loving all things in nature, and often feeling great disdain toward her fellow humans.

She has a Bachelor's of Science degree in Health Science, and Associates degrees in Paramedic and Herbal Therapy.

Being a nerd of the highest order makes her gravitate toward medical and science journals rather than Lady's Home Journal; text books rather than lusty novels.

If information is the best weapon or tool life can give, she's the most well-armed person North of the Mason-Dixon Line! It's also a compulsion to share this information and knowledge, which is why she has so many blogs covering so many different topics. And it's the vertigo that haunts her every moment - (waking or sleeping) - that makes it difficult to keep current on many of them, causing them to languish as her brain forces her to take life far more slowly than she can tolerate.

Leslie was raised Methodist, and maintains strong ties to the Methodist church, even if she never attends. Her religion is weak, but her faith is strong, feeling a very close tie to St. Francis of Assissi in our collective responsibility to the Earth and all the blessings God placed here under our care. It is her Methodist and agrarian upbringing that has her prove the spiritual can be pragmatic, and vice versa.

Please join her in making small steps that will result in huge strides of progress.

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Sources For Carbon Fast

The following are most of my sources for the statistics and reduction ideas given.

Carbon Offset
http://www.carbonfund.org/
www.nwf.org/nativeenergy
http://www.sierraclub.org/
http://www.arborday.org/

Chemicals
http://www.epa.gov/
http://www.nrdc.org/
http://www.mindfully.org/
http://www.environmentalchemistry.com/
http://www.care2.com/
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/ssctrs.ssc.nasa.gov/indr_landscape/indr_landscape.pdf
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1352323/potted_flowers_and_plants_may_help.html?cat=5
http://www.sgaonline.org.au/info_indoor_plants.html

Electric
http://www.powerscorecard.org/
http://www.treehugger.com/
http://www.ase.org/

Food
http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/
http://www.slowfoodusa.org/
http://www.fypower.org/

Garbage
http://www.compostingcouncil.org/
http://www.nrdc.org/
http://www.greenontario.org/

Gasoline
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/
http://www.hypermiling.com/
http://www.hypermilers.org/
http://www.nrdc.org/

Miscellaneous
http://www.echoinggreen.org/
http://www.carboncounter.org/
http://www.carbonfund.org/
http://www.planetark.com/
http://www.treehugger.com/
http://www.triplepundit.com/
http://www.tearfund.org/

Natural Gas
http://www.eere.energy.gov/
http://www.nrdc.org/
http://www.ase.org/

Paper
http://www.epa.gov/
http://www.doe.gov/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_recycling
http://www.recycle.net/

Recycling
http://www.nysar3.org/
http://www.recycle.com/
http://www.recyclespot.org/
www.gobroomecounty.com/solidwaste/recycling

Water
http://www.earth-policy.org/
http://www.wateruseitwisely.com/
http://www.eartheasy.com/
http://www.h2ouse.org/
http://www.powerscorecard.org/
http://www.nrel.gov/

Workplace
http://www.tesko-shopping.com/
http://www.galttech.com/
http://www.energystar.gov/
http://www.thegreenoffice.com/
http://www.greenbiz.com/
http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/
http://www.nysar3.org/

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Offset Your Carbon

If you or your family is anything like me and mine, you're already using most, if not all of the ideas presented here. Namely because it makes great economical sense. Helping the environment is just an incredible fortunate happenstance. And while I've not presented any ideas that cost you money, you may choose to buy carbon offsets.

What are carbon offsets?

Carbon offsets range from having someone plant a tree (or trees) to directly offset the carbon your produce, to helping fund a project within the renewable energy field that will offset future carbon production.

How to Buy Carbon Offsets

Most organizations that sell carbon offsets allow you to calculate your carbon footprint and will tell you what purchases will offset varying amounts of that footprint.

CarbonFund.org appears to be the most reputable. They are so incredibly transparent with their books and offer a variety of ways to purchase. They are also tax-deductible, assisting you in yet another way.

They also allow you to offset certain areas of life, which goes very well with this Lenten Fast. You can offset your home, your car, a specific trip, your daily mass transit use, or actually zero your carbon use.

Organizations offer some carbon offsetting programs within their organizations:

Sierra Club
National Arbor Day Foundation
National Wildlife Federation

Or go to the organization of your choice and search the site for "carbon offset" to see if they have a program you can contribute to.

Carbon Offsets for Work

And if you are the manager or owner of an office or business, CarbonFund.org will help you offset some/all of your carbon emissions there as well - and again, are tax deductible.

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Reducing At Work

(this is 2 pages, if you're printing)

All of the ways outlined to reduce your carbon footprint at home can and should be used at work. Listed below are additional ways and the statistics to go along with them. Even if you wish to remain anonymous in your Lenten Fast, you can still do your part at work without telling others what you’re doing.

Electric
The numbers for electric use in the office are staggering. 70% of all electric used in the US is in an office setting. 44% of the electric use is for heating and air conditioning, while lighting is another 40%. Simple actions on your part will reduce this number dramatically.

Turn your computer off at night. Since no one is using it for 15 hours of the day, there is no sense in leaving it on, unless it must be certain nights for IT maintenance. This alone will save 50% - 60% in the electric used by your workstation.

Turn the lights off in your area. The only time lights should be left on is if you work in a high rise and leave them on for a few weeks in spring and fall while certain birds migrate at night. Turn off lights in rooms not being used – do this as you walk by.

Don’t use a space heater under your desk. Bring a piece of upholstery foam in to rest your feet upon. This will keep your feet very warm without using any electricity. You can also buy radiant mats and foot rests that use far less electricity. Use a lap blanket.

Gasoline
If you live near any of your coworkers, consider carpooling. Whether you take turns or designate a driver, you all save on gas and auto maintenance.

Recycling
If your office/building doesn’t recycle, set up bins for you to take home and include in your recycling. With offices using an average of 10,000 sheets of paper per person per year, recycling this will save enormous amounts of energy, water and trees. Contact the ink/toner cartridge suppliers about recycling.

Lights
If you use incandescent lights in your workspace, replace one bulb with a CFL. The combination of light will be better for you and you will reduce the electric used in lighting your space by almost half.

Air Quality
Bring a plant to work. Many plants thrive in low or artificial lighting and greatly reduce the impurities in the air. Offices are very toxic environments with chemicals floating about such as benzene, TCE, carbon monoxide, and formaldehyde. These can be reduced quickly and efficiently with the addition of plants.

The Break room
Bring a mug in from home. The amount of energy used to make, use, throw away and store Styrofoam in a landfill significantly outweighs the same numbers for a mug from home. The choice becomes clear when the average “life” of a ceramic mug is 3000 days and a Styrofoam cup is 15 minutes. Bring in your own flatware, rather than the plastic knives, forks and spoons given with take-out food or supplied in the break room.

Consider asking your manager about the following:
Installing programmable thermostats . This act will pay for itself in about 4 months, saving up to 20% in heating and air conditioning bills. This will allow for a temperature setting that will reduce space heater use, cutting down on bills even further.

Office Equipment
Replace tower computers with laptops. Laptops generally use half the energy of a tower; more if it is an energy efficient model. Even replacing the monitor will help.

Replace office equipment with Energy Star equipment . There may also be tax incentives to assist with the purchases.

Lighting
Install motion-sensing light switches. There are many models on the market that will fit the needs of any room that isn’t used constantly, such as break rooms or restrooms. There are also Energy Star light fixtures that can replace broken fixtures.

Purchase remanufactured Ink/Toner cartridges
Using remanufactured cartridges saves an entire half-gallon of oil or 11 pounds of carbon emissions per cartridge.

Janitorial Chemicals
Replace janitorial supplies less hazardous materials. These contribute almost as heavily to indoor air pollution as the printers/copiers do.

Delivering
If your office also makes deliveries, consider using the UPS style of delivering – use right turns only. It saves enormous amount of gasoline over the course of the year.

Recycled Paper Products
Making 1 ton of virgin pulp paper uses nearly 72,000 gallons of water, whereas recycled paper needing 1/10 the water, 60% of the energy and 50% the chemicals.

Using recycled paper products in the break room and restrooms will also save. In home use, replacing a single pack of napkins and toilet paper with recycled a brand saves 2.4 million trees.

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Cut a Tenth of Your Processed Food

Gasp! Cut 10% of your food? You mean you DO have to give up chocolate?

No, just 10% of your processed foods, like chocolate. The processed, pre-made, pre-packaged, vague resemblance of nutrition. And 10% of restaurant food.

Overall, food—and all the energy it takes to grow, process, transport and prepare it—is responsible for 1/3 of all global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the Pew Center.

Bottled water of any brand takes 3 ounces of oil to produce the bottle, filter the water and transport it for your consumption.

One brand of orange juice discovered it takes a pint of oil to produce and ship a half-gallon of its orange juice to your store.

The amount of product made in Great Britain by Coca Cola emits the same CO2 as 80,000 homes – to employ 4500 people.

Your cheeseburger that you eat 3 times a week (US national average) takes a quart of oil to produce, ship, reheat and hand to you through the take-out window.

The average restaurant in the US uses 38 kWh of electricity and 111 cubic feet of natural gas per square foot of space per year. There’s no national average for the space used per restaurant, but there is an estimated 925,000 eateries nationwide. That’s a lot of energy.

Creating our food should be simple. In places such as China and South America, it is. For every calorie spent to grow/produce their food, they get 20 calories in return. Here in the US, for every 10 calories spent to grow/produce our food, we get 1 calorie in return. This is due to the industrialization and over-processing of our food. So this number includes the fertilizer (also industrialized), herbicides, pesticides, shipping, prepping, making, packaging, shipping again, and storing until you buy it and take it home. THEN, you still have to add in the energy spent to reheat and prepare it for your consumption.

When did it get so complicated? When ads convinced us it saved time and energy to have someone far outside our local towns to grow our beef, chicken, pork, and vegetables. It may save time when we’re making supper, but it doesn’t save any energy and ends up costing us dearly for years – financially, environmentally, and nutritionally.

Look at your food. How much of it is heat and serve, pop and swig, sit and swill? Cut 1 out of every 10 sodas, chocolate bars, cheeseburgers, microwave popcorn bags, jars of peanut butter, cans of soup, bags of potato chips, TV dinners and everything else that has been made for you from your diet.

Cook a real meal. Cook it from scratch! It’s possible – and you may even find it easy, enjoyable and relaxing! Cook in bulk so you can save some for another meal or meals.
Rather than eating Fast Food - Go for Slow Food!

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