It's over

Our Greener Faster Challenge is over!

How we did:

Natural Gas Usage: We actually went up a little compared to last year but were still 57% better than the Madison average of 856 therms/yr.

Electricity Usage
We did 6% better than 2009, bringing us to 22% better than the Madison average (the two big ticket items we are looking into..a more efficient clothes drier and a more efficient hot water heater)

Average Weekly Recycling: 6lbs
Average Weekly Trash: 1.6lbs
This was one of the lowest trash weights and we had four people!

Miles Driven:
62% better than the Madison average

Water:
19% better than the Madison average ( our most disappointing category...we had two water leaks that took us awhile to find and then to fix)

Food:
We averaged 80% local/organic ( no Madison average to compare to) This is the category we made the most change in. We now buy almost exclusively from Willy Street Coop...with Whole Food and Regent Coop as our back ups.

All participants got great prizes
We got a $100 gift certificate to our Willy St Coop..our favorite place to shop! And a gift certificate to Trek bikes. And 4 one month bus passes. Wow!!

I will miss the support of the other Greener Faster families..but am relieved to not have to collect any more data.


Photo: jayneandd

Ever heard of soap nuts?

I had not...we found out about them at the Isthmus Green Day.

What are they?
Dried fruit from the Soapberry tree that contain saponin ( a natural cleaner).

What's so great about them?
-petroleum free
-no toxic chemicals ( in fact no added anything)
-light weight ( use less energy to ship)

How do you use them?
Put 2-4 nuts in a small reuseable linen bag and throw the whole bag in the washer. The nuts can be re-used up to 5 times. We have a front load washer so we will just but the nuts right in the soap drawer ( no bag needed)

Where do you get them?
We got ours from Reuseable Future

Do they work?
We'll let you know

PS: People are asking how we are doing on the Buy No New Challenge.
We did purchase 1 new thing. Shin guards for Nate for soccer. We feel strongly that we don't want to take changes with our kids' safety...so felt OK about this purchase.

Two small changes

Taking a break from practicing democracy...at home we are focusing on reducing our energy use. One thing we are taking at look at is how we cook.

Here are two ways we are using less energy when we cook:

1. Using a pressure cooker. Not just to cook beans...but also rice and root veggies. Not sure why it took me so long to realize that it takes less time to boil potatoes in the pressure cooker. They are easy to use and save you time.

2. Bake in smaller size pans. This cuts down on baking time. We bake quick breads and cakes in smaller pans. Another save energy and time.

I love when being sustainable saves me time too :)

It's Report Card Time

We got our first progress report. Here's how we are doing.

Gas- The goal for therms/month is 42. (this is 40% below the Madison average). We passed our goal. Our monthly average was 2 therms/month. But can we keep this up in the cold weather?

Driving- Miles/month should be around 650. ( 40% below the Madison average) We were 521(Aug), 853 (Sept), and 950 (Oct). We were on track in the warmer months. (Note: two people drive this car, not one which is what the 650miles are based on.) However we will still aim for 650 mil/month. This we be a real challenge now that the snow/cold is here.

Trash- The goal is less than 82 lbs/ month. We average 2.5 lbs/week. Well below Madisons' average. We would love to reduce this further and get our recycling down...as well as make sure we aren't "trashy" when we are on the road.

Electricity- Our goal is 360 Kwh/month. Our electricity/month is 336 Kwh, 415 Kwh and 372 Kwh in August, September and October. Here is our weak spot...we have our work cut out for us.

Food- With Willy Street West more accessible, it is easy for us eat 70-80% local/organic. This may become more of a challenge in the winter months as our local options shrink. Can we afford to eat more organic?

One additional challenge for this month is to pay attention to our holiday spending and see how well we do at shopping our values. I just shopped for our Christmas cookie ingredients at Willy Street. Our Christmas cookies this year will be close to 100% local/organic ( wonder if they will taste better?)

A green cat?

Meet Tandy, the newest member of our household. She doesn't look green but she is..or as green as we could get.
Ben had been asking for a cat for years...this last time he even offered to pay the adoption fee (that was a hard offer to turn down.)

But we are trying to minimize our impact on the planet...would having a pet dramatically add to our impact? We asked Ben to do some additional research.

Based on what Ben found out..here is what we did.

1. Shopped for pet supplies at Goodwill. They have a pet section. Ben was able to find a food and water dish as well as a pet bed and pooper scooper.


2. Found cat climbers on the curb ( need to be washed but in good shape)

3. Our biggest concern was the litter box and would this add to land fill. Ben and Mark found a wheat based litter. Want to know about other litter box options check out Green Little Cat

Now the next step will be to build a separate compost..since we can't compost cat scat with our regular compost for health reasons. Our Greener Faster Challenge buddies suggested a backyard pet waste digester.

Have a cat and want to do more? Check out the 30 day Green Cat Challenge

Confessions of a Slacker

So how is that Greener Faster Challenge going you may be asking.

The truth is we have been slacking. Three things that have slowed us down.
1. It was more important to me to get involved with the election. Our policy makers will make decisions that have the greatest impact on energy use.
2. We fell behind on tracking. I never did get an easy tracking system in place ..which meant we weren't seeing how we were doing...so we all forgot.
3. With travel it seemed we had done the really big stuff. Like going down to one car..so it was hard to get motivated to make more changes. Coordinating the use of our one car was taking enough time and energy.

To be honest, if we were doing this on our own...I'd probably throw in the towel and move on. But since we have made a commitment to a group, giving up is not an option ( the power of social influence.

Some thoughts on how to get motivated.

The competition is not motivating me..in fact it gets in the way. I don't want to compete with the five other families. I want to learn from them and I want them to succeed.

We had a discussion about prizes early on and there is interest in not having all the prizes go to the one family that reduces their energy the most ( though that should be recognized and rewarded) Some other prize categories could be:
*Most innovative energy reduction idea
*Most dedicated family
*Most generous ( family that shares the most ideas to the rest of us)
*Most public ( family that shares the most publicly via blog, TV, newspaper,events)
*Most social: family that gets the most other people involved (like our neighborhood 10 day no car challenge last year)and an
*advocacy award for the family that engages or communicates most with policy makers. So I'll share the ideas with our group next week.

My goal this weekend is to get back on track with tracking...we need to try a system that is easy and visible. Stay tuned!

Eat Local Update

So how are we doing? Has being involved in the Greener, Faster Challenge changed our behavior?

Our first month goal was to buy more local and organic
We spent $739 on food of which $521 was local or organic.

We got much of our food from our CSA farm ( community supported agriculture) and the farmer's market. Our goal was 90%..which we didn't make but we did increase our local/organic purchasing.

Ben was reading our cereal box at the table the other day listing all the organic ingredients. When Ben and Nate went shopping on their own..they came back with local and organic ( with no prompts from parents)

When we are in town, our new Saturday lunch tradition is Thyme bread from Stella's, goat cheese from Dream Farm, and apples from the gentle apple man. All from the west side farmers market. ( the gentle apple man is our family name for the man we buy apples from..because he carefully and gently picks out each apple for you. You can't be in a rush when you buy from him..but boy you get the best apples.)

So have we changed our purchasing behavior....a big yes.
Pros
-we eat and shop more intentionally
-we are all much more aware of where our food comes from
-our food dollars are supporting our values
-we have discovered some fun local foods ( we had a great time discovering how many local food Brennans' carries...and if you like taste tests...Brennan's beats Whole Foods. You can eat a meal while shopping at Brennan's ..and it is a good meal)

Cons
- We spend more money on food
-We are spending more time shopping ( this may get better as we get better at knowing where to buy what)


Photo source: Vermont Valley Farm ( our CSA)

Going car free

For one day at least....

Wednesday, September 22 is World Car Free Day.

This year our family will bike, walk, or ride the bus to work, school, and soccer. I am taking an art class and I picked the one that is walking distance from our house(my class starts Wed night)

There is a great event planned for those of you in Madison. EnAct and Community Car are hosting a walk around the capitol with Mayor Dave on September 22nd from 5-6:30pm. They will raffle off FREE alternative transportiaton prizes- one of which is a Voyageur GS bike courtesy of Williamson Bicycles.

If you can't go car free on Wednesday...what would car lite look like?

Unexpected Blessings

This is Ben making dinner. We have been meaning to have the boys start making one dinner a week ..and this month seemed to be a good time to start.

Rather than moan../Ben opened a restaurant...Nesslarino's Pizzaria.

He made the pizza dough from scratch (local toppings included: three cheeses, basil, tomatoe, onion, pesto and organic pepperoni). He also had an antipasto plate, desserts and drinks. He set the table and served wearing a suit coat.

He thought of all of this on his own ( we just asked him to think of one dinner to make). I now know the best restaurant in town!!

100% Living our Values

Today I realized we didn’t have pita bread for dinner. Luckily Mark had the car because it would have been tempting to make a quick run to the store.

I decided to shop at Whole Foods: I can walk there, they carry organic and some local and I can recycle both plastic bags and #5 plastic.

Beautiful quiet walk (since neither of the boys was interested in coming along)

I stopped at Bagels Forever. Good local bagels, cheap and no plastic!

At Whole Foods, it took longer to shop since I don’t know where everything is and I am reading labels to see if there is a local or organic option. Whole Foods seems expensive but the positive side is
-beautiful place to shop
-easy to find either local or organic. They are carrying more local now but they should take a tip from Willy St Coop and make their buy local tags a different color.
-really good taste tests. I felt rewarded for shopping!

I did buy too much so my backpack was heavy on the way home ( felt I was 2 inches shorter by the time I got home)

All in all, it was a good trip. Took longer but on the “Living our Values “ scale= 100%

And we're off....

We have had our house assessment and our first all group meeting.

What we learned from our assessment:
We are 61% better than the Madison average in our gas useage. yea!
-Goal: maintain or see if we can go lower

Water: 65% below Madison average. Sounds good so far.
Goal: maintain or reduce

Electric: This was our big ouch. We doubled our use from last year. You should have seen our faces when we saw the graph. So although we were 18% below the Madison average last year...we know we can do better ( because we already did)

We are also tracking our mileage, weighing our trash and recycling and tracking how much local/organic food we purchase.

First impression: this is a lot of data to collect. I have already lost the forms once. We are writing on scraps of paper and losing them. I feel like we are off to a limping start.

Our goals for this month:
1. We have to address our electric use and strategies to get it lower.
2. This is the ideal time to focus on eating local...so we are setting the bar high.
3. Get some systems in place for collecting and keeping track of our data.

What have we gottten ourselves into?

We are one of five Madison families selected to participated in year long Greener, Faster Challenge.

We have made a commitment to reduce our energy use to 40% below the Madison average. ( the good news...we are already 20% below, the bad news: we have done all the easy stuff already)

The challenge officially begins in August.

We will be working on goals related to
-energy use
-water conservation
-travel
-eating local and organic
-reducing our trash and increasing recycling

We took some steps to get better in each of these areas when we started this blog. But this challenge is more public and puts us in friendly competition with 4 other families. And there are prizes involved!

More details to follow.