Reduce your carbon footprint by at least 5%.
The City of Ann Arbor is launching the 2011 Household Energy Challenge featuring a website to track energy-saving and carbon emission-reducing actions you can take from home, on the road, or at the dinner table.
If every household in the city reduced emissions by 5% avoiding the release of 170 lbs. of CO2, we would keep 95.8 million lbs. of CO2out of the atmosphere – the equivalent of taking 8,311 cars off the road for a year. The Energy Challenge website provides many Energy Actions to help you get there, and a weekly log to record actions taken each week so you can see your progress over the month.
There are lots of things can you do, including reducing the demand on your water heater by using less hot water, that cut down on energy use.
- Install a low-flow showerhead saving enough energy to avoid 105 pounds of CO2 pollution.
- And shave just 2 minutes off your shower time to cut another 21 pounds of CO2 over a month’s time.
These two actions taken together are over 74% of the Energy Challenge goal. The Energy Challenge website has many other tips for small things you can do!
Do your part all February to help us meet the Challenge, it’s a great way to involve your family on local solutions to climate change. Sign up now and log your progress once per week through February.
Please help spread the word. Enlist your friends and neighbors in taking the Energy Challenge!
HRWC has a special interest in promoting the saving water saves energy message. As the result of a gift from Masco Corporation Foundation, we’ll be spending the next year developing a program that teaches homeowners right here in Michigan ways to reduce the carbon footprint of their water use. In the meantime for even more tips and specially labeled water saving products, take a look at EPA’s Water Sense website. Or go to our special “Climate Change Edition” of the Winter 2009 Huron River Report to learn more about the impacts of climate change at our watershed level. And stay tuned for more from HRWC in 2011.