Reduce my ecological footprint

If any of you have seen Google today, you may already know this, but I thought I’d share for the rest of you. Today, on Saturday, March 29, between 8 and 9 p.m., several cities across the world are sponsoring/participating in Earth Hour. This is an energy conservation effort created by the World Wildlife Fund to raise awareness about climate change. How can you help? Turn off your lights for one hour, between 8 and 9 p.m. today (your own local time).

I think most of us have heard complaints (and maybe even made some of them ourselves) about making changes in our lifestyles that will help the environment. I know I certainly have. But this is for one hour on one day. How small of an effort could this be? How much of a lifestyle change does this require?

The website for Earth Hour has suggestions for what to do in that one hour when your lights are off. So check those out! :)

To reduce my footprint, I pledge to do the following:

FOOD
1. Eat all of the food I buy.
2. Increase the unprocessed, unpackaged foods that I buy, as well as those that are organic and grown locally. I’m at about 50-50 now, I’d like to increase to at least 70%.

MOBILITY
3. Continue walking everywhere. (Don’t have much choice as a student.)

HOUSING
4. Get a dryer rack or figure out how to hang clothes up so that I can use air drying and reduce number of laundry loads.
5. Reduce the number of hours I use a computer or the TV every day from 6 to 3.
6. Reduce my shower time for each day from 15 minutes to 5-7 minutes.

If anyone needs help figuring out what their footprint is right now or wants ideas on how to reduce it, this is a helpful website.