Bloggity Blog: Our Impact on all of us

I always wanted to know what carbon foot printing meant. I grew up in the 60's and terms like global warming, the internet, spam and carbon foot printing was just not even thought about. we were more into

Flower Power and things were

. In fact where I grew up being ultra conservative and recycling meant you were pretty square and nerdy. I grew up in the beginning of the disposable generation, raised by a woman who made things last. Plus for the last 20 years I have been in the midwest and a primarily stay at home mom.. which means I am way out of touch with what's up and happening.

So today when I got an email wanting to know if I knew what my carbon footprint was I decided to finally find out what it meant. Knowing what it means is the first step to wanting to know what it is. Well I discovered that a person or families carbon foot print is the amount of carbon (CO2) that a person emits in a year. CO2 is produced in a lot of different ways and apparently it is the main cause of global warming.

Okay now this is gonna sound dumb I know...but this is something I have heard before but I never gave much thought to. What did I do to create global warming anyway? How can I stop the world from self destructing? I am one person... Well, the answer is simple, one person can not do much on their own, however it is when that one person is joined by many that changes occur. You start to make a difference when you drive less and walk more, commute to work instead of driving by yourself. Buy a pump hair spray instead of aerosol. Most importantly recycle as much as possible.

I discovered I was cool before cool was cool.... I have been doing more then I ever knew for as long as I knew. I wash and save a few cottage cheese, butter and sour cream tubs, I grow and can my own foods,I have a compost pile and I recycle everything.I have always had reusable water bottles and a filter system. And I can not go shopping with out my cloth shopping bags. I did not do it to be hip or with the in crowd. I did it because it was more convenient for me to have things on hand that I liked.I can fill my bottles with a multitude of drinks and go! And I don't have to worry about finding a garbage can, it's coming home with me. I love using my bags because I can load them up and make less trips in the house and, they don't break apart like plastic ones do.The bowls? Okay this is for selfish reasons, I got tired of the kids taking my Tupperware and never returning them,so now I send home left overs in cottage cheese containers and butter bowls lol...

I don't think that I will ever solve global warming but it warms my heart to know that I am doing my part in trying to make it better. If you want to find out more on your Carbon footprint and what you can do to make a change in your lifestyle or maybe help reduce the wedges in the pie a little....

Breakdown of a typical person's carbon footprint