Areas Average US per year 90% Feb
Gasoline (per person) - in gallons 42 4 0.33
Electricity (kwh) (household) 917 90 98.25
Heat +Cooking: Natural Gas (therms) (household) 83 1 67.65
Heat +Cooking: Oil (gallons) (household) 626 5 0.25
Heat +Cooking: Wood (unsustainable) (household) 10 8 0
Garbage (lbs/year) (per person) 136.9 27.38 4
Water (gallons/year) (per person) 3,042 507 7.48
Consumer Goods (in dollars) (per household) $10,000.00 $83.33 0
Food: Local   70% 6%
Food Bulk   25% 12%
Food Wet Goods 50% 5% 5%

All this micromanaging is starting to get tedious. Or maybe I am sick of the cold weather.

Here is an explanation of the numbers in the table above:

1. Transportation - I am not sure I will be tracking transportation usage in March. I use public transit (or my legs or my bike) to go everywhere  and I am far below the 90% guidelines.

2. Electricy - I use the wind powered electricity so I get some sort of payback. And the electric usage is a bit high. One reason is because of our desktops. The other is that we haven’t changed all our perfectly working bulbs to the environmentally friendly kind. Also we have an ancient fridge that is a hog and I am not getting rid of the fridge for a more energy efficient one because I am a renter. Boo!

3. Heat + Cooking - I am tired of the winter so I am not quite as excited about freezing my buns anymore. Wearing layers is starting to get annoying. This morning I was so excited to not wear long johns for the first time in months because the weather is supposed to be pleasant. I am quite envious of arduous and her L.A. weather. Cooking indicates the amount of oil we use. I just noted what we purchased this month, not what we used.

4. Garbage - Here too we’re doing great. Not purchasing packaged food helps a ton. Our worms are a godsend in this area. Everybody should get worms.

5. Water - Using grey water to flush the toilet has helped alot. Especially our wallet. I don’t think I will be doing anything more to improve in this area either.

6. Consumer goods - One goal this year was to limit consumer goods. I don’t like the fact that the 90% goal is measured in terms of dollars. I’d rather it be measured in some other terms…such as recyclability. But I don’t know how one would measure it thataway. We didn’t buy anything in Feb…but in the summer we will be purchasing two bikes (Surly Long Haul Trucker is currently a strong contender) and will be selling/donating our existing bikes.

7. Food - The local food group is so low because I didn’t track where our cheese came from. And we eat alot of cheese. I’ve been trying out alot of goat cheese which always seem to be from Canada. We did purchase alot of food in bulk. The rest was organic. I went through our food purchase list over the weekend and realized that we purchased almost no nonorganic food.