Be Green
The McCarters, like so many others, became extremely aware of our personal impact on the environment after seeing
An Inconvenient Truth (the Wikipedia
entry; rent the movie at
Netflix).
Les works at Hawaiian Electric, who is taking an active role in helping Hawaii become more oil independent with
renewable energy. They have been working hard to reduce the power consumption in their data center by sealing the computer floor, bringing in blade servers and virtualizing servers and workstations.
But the family wanted to do more. We are trying to cut back on electricity usage and driving where we can.
One way to help even more is to reduce our carbon footprint by helping create more green sources of power. Through research, we found one of the more effective places to contribute to make us carbon neutral.
NativeEnergy lets us pay monthly to help build more windfarms which then reduces the use of oil. While we are now CO2 neutral, we want to find new ways to do our part.
If you are a friend or family member, don't be surprised if you get a birthday or Christmas gift this year of "carbon offset credits."
Cut back on carbon usage by NOT using plastic bags. Buying just on thing? Don't take the bag, just carry it out.
It is estimated that it takes 12 million barrels of oil to make 100 billion platic shopping bags. Here is a great bag that you can carry in a purse or your pocket and not need to use the store bags:
ChicoBags
TIP - Add the following to your emails as a closing signature to promote saving trees from useless printing:
Save Trees. Print only when necessary.