Reduce your carbon footprint – 10 easy steps to take today.

A lot has been written about carbon footprints and reducing the impact we have on the environment. While living “off the grid” might not be something all of us can do, there are some easy steps we can all take to reduce the impact our daily lives have on the environment. The added bonus is that most of these also save us money in the process. Here are ten:

1. Adjust your thermostat 2 degrees (up in the summer, down in the winter). It will lower your energy bill and reduce up to 500 lbs. of Greenhouse Gases (GHGS) per year.
2. Perform regular maintenance on your vehicles. Your car will drive better and save up to 800 lbs. of GHGS per year.
3. Reduce your driving by 20 miles a week. Do you have an opportunity to car pool? Can you take one car instead of two to the kid’s game? You will save on your gas bill and up to 1,000 lbs. of GHGS per year.
4. Reduce your kilowatt-hour usage by 20 per month. Does every light in the house need to be on at all times? You will save on your electric bill and up to 200 lbs. of GHGS per year.
5. Enable the power saver feature on your computer and monitor. A simple setting that can save up to 100 lbs. of GHGS per year.
6. Run your dishwasher only when full. This is one that has multiple benefits, you save water and energy, which save money and saves up to 100 lbs. of GHGS per year.
7. Wash clothes in cold water. Save the energy needed to heat the water being used and save up to 200 lbs. of GHGS per year.
8. Replace your incandescent bulbs. By investing in LED or CFL light bulbs instead of traditional incandescent bulbs, you can greatly reduce your energy usage saving up to 40 lbs. of GHGS per bulb per year.
9. Recycle. Recycling is something that is easy and in a lot of areas required. By recycling aluminum, steel, plastic, glass and paper, you can reduce up to 1,300 lbs. of GHGS per year.
10. Reuse. Even better that recycling, is reusing. Do you need a new bottle of water each time you leave the house or can you use a refillable one? The paper bag you pack your lunch can be recycled but what about a reusable container?

As you can see, some very easy and mostly free steps can greatly reduce your impact on the environment. Now here is the challenge – how many of these are you going to start doing today? For more tips and information visit www.airkinglimited.com

GHGS calculations courtesy of www.epa.gov

Don’t be a BigFoot - Reduce your carbon footprint

It doesn’t matter if you are leading the charge against global warming or just a homeowner looking for ways to save a few dollars on energy costs, we can all benefit from reducing our carbon footprint.

Your carbon footprint is basically how much carbon dioxide (CO2) you produce from your lifestyle. Factors include how much you drive, heating and cooling your home, trash you produce and so forth. Some of these items are unavoidable if we actually want to be able to survive, but there are many things we can do to reduce our footprints. Most of the time, it doesn’t take a lot of effort or money, but they do have a big impact.

Lets take light bulbs for example. There are approximately 125 million houses in the United States (source – Google). If every home changed one light bulb that is on for 2 hours a day from a 100watt bulb to a 26watt CFL that would be over 18 billion watts of energy saved. At a conservative average of 10 cents per kilowatt that is about $1.8 million in savings. Unfortunately all that money doesn’t come directly to you but hopefully you can see how a small item like changing 1 light bulb can have a large impact. To look at it another way, that would be about the equivalent of removing 2,700 cars from the road. Other items like driving less, recycling, adjusting your thermostat and more can all be simple little things we do but when done as a whole country can have a huge impact.

Want to know how much green house gas your car produces in a year? Air King has a calculator that will let you know as well as many other helpful tips to reduce your carbon footprint at http://www.airkinglimited.com/page/climate-change.html.