As I said when I first started gearing up for the No Impact Experiment, I wasn’t sure how much I’d actually learn. I figured we already lived pretty green, what with recycling and taking the train to work and all. But I was willing to give it a go and see where else I could make reductions. And I did. If you read back over my blog entries for the past week, you’ll see that I found many ways in which our carbon footprint could be made smaller still.

So yesterday, on the final day of No Impact Week, the Sierra Club declared an Eco-Sabbath, a day to take a break from everything. I generally treat Sundays as my day of rest anyway, so I figured it would be a good chance to reflect on the changes I made this week and how I can keep the momentum going.

I did an online search for a carbon calculator and spent a little time figuring out what our average yearly carbon output was before we started doing anything eco-friendly, what it was after we started living greener but before the No Impact Challenge, and what it is now.

In a word… holycrap.

Before we started doing anything, our estimated greenhouse emissions (carbon) came in at a whopping 38 tons. That’s less that the national average of 53 tons per year for a two-person household, but considerably less than the world average of 11 tons.

Okay. So we started recycling, I started taking the train to work and walking as much as possible when I went anywhere else. That brought our yearly average output down to 30 tons per year. Better!

Enter the Sierra Club with Operation OK, Big Shot, Let’s See How Green You REALLY Are, and I started buying less; consciously reducing the amount of trash I generate; buying local, seasonal and unpackaged foods; reducing the amount of electricity I use; and toting a bucket of water out of the bathroom after my shower… NOW guess what my estimated carbon output is. How about 20 tons?!

That is, of course, per year. I’ve only been doing this for a week, but the changes were so simple, so painless that Guy and I have agreed it will be no problem at all to make all of them a permanent part of our lives. And we’ve also committed ourselves to finding more ways to cut back. My goal is to get us down to 15 tons per year. My dream is to meet the worldwide average of 11.

So … whew! It’s been a great week here at the Kass Kompound and I’m excited about the future. If you did anything for No Impact week or if you want to share anything you’re doing to help reduce your carbon footprint, I’d love to hear from you. I will be posting my green thoughts periodically, but after today, back to your regularly scheduled sarcasm.

And I love my volunteer work. Love it. Over the years it has been one of the most rewarding parts of my life. For awhile, I spent Sunday mornings at a VA hospital, where I’d serve breakfast, then help take the veterans to services in the hospital’s chapel. Every Sunday morning, I’d say to Charlie Witherspoon, a veteran of World War I (you read that right), “Charlie, do you want coffee?” And he’d say “Nope. It keeps me awake during church.” And every time, I’d crack up. Because dang it – it was always funny.

Some of the things I saw at the VA warmed me clear through. The stories, the camaraderie, the laughter. Other things haunt me to this day: the shattered bodies, the ruined minds, the death. But I have always been grateful for my time there, for all that those veterans came to mean to me, for everything they taught me about life, about war, about my country.

I love working with the elderly, so I also did a lot of volunteer work at nursing homes. I was always sent to spend time with those who had no family, or at least no one close by, to keep them from getting lonely and bored.  I can’t swear that the occasional hearing aid wasn’t thrown under the occasional bed when they saw me coming, but I had fun. They all had stories to tell, and I found their mere presence comforting and warm. It was like I had grandparents everywhere I looked.

My friends would warn me not to get attached to “the old people.” Yeah right. I got attached. They died. I went to funerals and cried my heart out. Then I’d go back, find someone else who needed me, and get attached all over again. Was it rewarding? You go get a warm, wrinkly smile that lights up the room when you walk in, you go get a pajama-hug that smells like Aqua Velva, you go share contraband candy behind the nurses’ backs and then you tell me if it’s rewarding.

I also volunteered at grade schools, churches and animal shelters over the years, and most recently, my efforts have turned toward the environment. I’m a member of the Sierra Club, obviously, and Greenpeace. I’ve stood in the rain and campaigned for tougher federal environmental standards, I’ve rallied against whale hunting, I collect garbage on my morning jogs, I’ve written letters to my Congressmen about the need for cleaner energy and less reliance on fossil fuels, I’ve bugged my bosses to let me start an office recycling program. I’m considering doing a Julia Butterfly Hill at a local college campus where they are about to tear out massive amounts of trees to put in an athletic field. I am proud to say I was green before being green was hip. In fact, sometimes I was green when being green was downright annoying.

So why am I telling you all of this? Because I’m hoping you’ll give me the Nobel Peace Prize in volunteering? No. (Although if you want to, that’d be swell.) I’m telling you this for the same reason the Sierra Club encourages everyone participating in the No Impact Experiment to start looking for ways to try to give back.

We’ve spent this week reducing our carbon footprint by making less garbage, eating local foods, conserving energy and water…  It. Feels. Great. And when you do something that makes you chest-squeezingly excited, don’t you want to share it? And that is why I’m telling you about the volunteer work I’ve done over the years, and how amazingly happy it has made me.

So please … find a way to give back to your neighborhood, your town,  your country, your planet. There is always a need, and you are the answer.

But since Day 6 was about learning to conserve water, I really had to start right away in the morning, because that’s the time of day I use the most water. I always take short showers – five minutes, tops – so I doubted I could shorten the time much without just leaping in and out of the spray in a way that would not only fail to get me very clean but also result in a lot of flapping of parts that don’t need to be flapping. At least not that early in the morning.

What I could do, I decided, was to collect the water that would ordinarily be wasted as the spray warmed up. So I set my bucket on the floor of the shower and turned on the water. By the time it was warm, the bucket was three-quarters full. I lifted it out, set it aside, and used it later to wash my kitchen floor. I will also use water I save that way for watering my plants, they just don’t need it at the moment. I also put the big bottle of water in the back of my toilet tank to cut back on the amount of water used per flush.

And WOW have I become the glass police around here. I used to take a glass out of the cupboard, use it, and stick it in the dishwasher. Now I use the same glass all day. And this is probably a well-duh moment for everyone reading this, but it was eye-opening for me to realize how much less I now run the dishwasher. Saves water, saves money on detergent, and cuts down on the number of times I have to unload the stupid thing. Not my favorite chore.

As for the washing machine, well… I did handwash a few things but I just can’t face washing Guy’s jeans in the sink. I do  make sure I have full loads before I do laundry, I use cold water, and I don’t wash any piece of clothing that doesn’t need it. As my sister so beautifully put it when she was in college and doing laundry as infrequently as possible, smell the pits of your shirts and the crotch of your pants. If they really need washed, you’ll know.

But as the day wore on and the power didn’t come back, I realized that none of the things that pressure me during the average day could touch me today. I couldn’t go online and work for just a “couple of hours” that invariable stretched into many. The phone, having lost its charge to the base, wasn’t ringing. The whole apartment was eerily silent – that quiet, omnipresent hum of all my electrical appliances, which I never even notice anymore, was gone.

Standing in the middle of the living room, I suddenly felt very calm. And very free. I grabbed my glasses and a novel I’ve been reading and curled up on the sofa. The day was cool and beautiful, the window beside me was open and I spent most of the day there, bathed in sunlight and fresh air, reading and feeling more relaxed than I have in so long.

So I found myself looking forward to Day 5 of the Sierra Club’s No Impact Experiment, which focused on using no-energy alternatives to accomplish daily tasks. Not that I thought I’d be able to spend yet another day reading on the sofa, although how awesome would that have been? This time I had to make a conscious effort to use less energy. Following the Sierra Club’s advice, I went from room to room in the apartment and made a list of everything that uses energy to operate: lights, fans, window air conditioners, refrigerator, toaster, microwave, computer, printer, television… Then I put a star next to any item I would ordinarily be using during the rest of the No Impact Experiment. That would be, let’s see… yeah. All of them.

Next I had to decide if I was going to eliminate or mitigate my use of each of those items. It’s been the hottest summer on record in New Jersey – I didn’t think it would be fair of me to force my husband to live without air conditioning the rest of the week, so we compromised. We shut both our window units completely off during the day, and used just the fan in the evening, when it was a little cooler. I had to use my computer for work, but I shut off my printer and since I didn’t need to use it all day, kept it off. When I was done working, I shut off the entire power strip so nothing in my office was using “ghost power,” which is electricity that is used even when the appliance isn’t active.

And last night, Guy and I agreed to try something radical: we didn’t watch TV. He had some paperwork he needed to go over, and I was eager to get back to the novel I’m reading, so we shut the TV off and spent the evening quietly on the sofa, with only one light on in the whole apartment. I don’t think it’s my imagination that we both slept better last night. Without the noise and visual stimulation of the TV all evening, I think we went to bed much more relaxed.

There’s no question in my mind that doing without power will be the most difficult part for me while adjusting to my new lower impact lifestyle. I admit I will not be able to do without my washing machine and I am not willing to get rid of my refrigerator. But I can continue to do what I learned yesterday, and make a few other changes. Hang my clothes to dry instead of using the dryer. Learning to use raw food so I rely less on my refrigerator. Taking the stairs instead of the elevator at work. Limiting use of the air conditioner. I’m sure I’ll come up with more.

Guy is mumbling right now in the background about how maybe I should just learn to turn off the lights when I leave the room once in awhile. Hey, I wonder if he has a power strip I can just shut off. Or at least a mute button.

What made this day a little more difficult for me is having to focus on food that’s local and seasonal. I buy food at the grocery store. I try to buy organic as much as possible, but honestly, I don’t really pay attention to where it comes from. Farmers markets are for lazy, sunny Saturdays when we happen across one while out doing other things.

So this challege was to eat local, seasonal, unpackaged food. According to John Hendrickson in “Energy use in the U.S. Food System,” an average item of food travels 1,500 miles to your plate. Wow. WOW. That’s a lot of carbon just to transport food. My town has a farmers’ market set up in a municipal parking lot that’s right on my way to the train, but it’s on Tuesday mornings. And of course I wasn’t organized enough to stop there on Tuesday, don’t even bother wondering.

So on a whim, I headed for my local Whole Foods Market where I often go for organic food and grains in bulk. Turns out they also have produce marked with signs indicating what’s grown locally. I live in New Jersey, for crying out loud – the Garden State. Why don’t ALL the supermarkets around here carrying locally grown produce? As soon as I finish this, I’m writing notes to all the stores in my town to ask.

What could I do besides buying locally grown produce? Well, I’ve made a conscious effort lately to cut down on red meat, so that part wasn’t too hard. Actually, I’ve been toying with the idea of going vegetarian altogether. And I only have organic dairy products in the house.

Packaged products are a bit harder to give up, but in truth they are full of preservatives and they create more trash. My family in-law has a running joke that my niece and nephews know it’s almost time for dinner when they hear the crinkle of cellophane in the kitchen. But in my sister-in-law’s defense, convenience foods got that name for a reason. And also she has something like 78 kids.

So while I focused yesterday on fresh fruits and vegetables and organic dairy products, I need to work on making this a more permanent change. I make changes all the time – I’m always starting something new and exciting only to abandon it a few days later because it’s too complicated or I get bored or maybe because I tend to have the attention span of a squirrel.

Is this a change I can make permanent? I think so. I just need to make healthy, local, seasonal food convenient until it becomes a habit. I’m going to start leaving for work earlier on Tuesdays so I can stock up at the farmers’ market. I’m going to lessen my foodprint by keeping those foods ready to go and within easy reach.

No word yet on whether I’m going to be able to give up my daily can of Dr. Pepper. Don’t rush me. At least I recycle the can.

I actually started driving much less when I was downsized from my job last fall. Funny how not having to go to work really cuts down your commute time.  I began working as a full-time freelance writer, which means for the most part, I work from home. But then one of my clients, based in a nearby city, asked that I work from their office for a few hours most days. I started thinking: the train station is only about a half mile from my house, and about the same distance from the other train station to the office. If I walked to and from the trains, I’d get an extra two miles of walking into my day, and I wouldn’t have to sit in traffic.

I considered that option for about an eighth of a second before I decided to do it. And I gotta tell you, I love not driving. Yes, there are days when I waste so much time in the morning that my leisurely walk to the train becomes a sweaty, screaming sprint. And yes, I sometimes have to wait for the train if it’s delayed. But to be able to settle back and bury myself in a book, or listen to my iPod on the way to work and sing “Rock You Like a Hurricane” loud and off-key for the enjoyment of my fellow passengers… oh yeah.

Yes, there are times I’m not crazy about this arrangement. It breaks my heart to see how many little animals are dead in the road and in the gutters, no match for our huge growling vehicles that show our self-proclaimed dominance over all living things.

We also had a whole stretch of days where it did nothing but rain, and I arrived at work every day with soaking wet pants and a decidedly bad attitude. Did it rain that much before I started walking to the train? Dunno. I suspect it was another of Mother Nature’s screw jobs. And being a pedestrian in northern New Jersey has its own little treats, like people honking at other people for not trying to run over me while I’m in the crosswalk. Haha, good times.

But having said all that… taking mass transit still beats coming around a bend and running into a sea of taillights. No traffic, no tolls, no parking meters, no stopping for gas.

If I need to make any stops after work, I’ve got a pharmacy, two grocery stores, a liquor store and a dry cleaner right on my way home. I stick a reusable shopping bag in my purse when I’m leaving in the morning, and take care of my errands on the way home. Zero fossil fuels burned and now my thighs could crack a walnut. Well, okay, a grape. Well, okay, a pudding.

Monday’s challenge was to discover how wasting less improves our lives. We were urged to consider all trash bins off limits. First I emptied the little trash bag I’d toted around all day Sunday and divided into two piles: stuff I used for more than ten minutes, and stuff I used for less than ten minutes. The less-than-ten-minutes pile was embarrassingly bigger than the other pile. My biggest contribution to the trash pile? Paper towels. Apparently I loves me some Viva. And the most disturbing part of all – I tear off a paper towel and use it to wipe up a few spatters of water from the countertop, then toss it in the bin without thinking twice.

I have a package of reusable cloths that my parents gave me for my birthday (along with some eco-friendly shopping bags – apparently my reputation preceeds me). I always use them when I’m cleaning – I have one I keep in the bathroom and one I keep in the kitchen. Last night I took another one out of the packet and put it under the paper towel dispenser. When I was cleaning up after dinner, I used that instead of a paper towel to dry off the counter. I never would have dreamed that forgoing one paper towel would make me feel so virtuous. There’ll be no living with me soon.

I also followed some of the Sierra Club’s suggestions for reducing waste during the day. I dug out a resusable container for my sandwich at lunch instead of wrapping it in foil or a plastic bag. I made myself an iced coffee and put it in my old travel mug instead of stopping for one on my way to work. So not only did I avoid a plastic cup, lid and straw, but I saved myself some calories and about five bucks. Did the Happy Dance, right there in the kitchen. Doing it again now, just at the memory.

I also pulled out some handkerchiefs I got as a gift a few years ago, and tucked one of those into my purse. They’re white and have a ”C” embroidered on them and if you don’t think I felt dainty and feminine later when I used it to cover a huge spitty sneeze, well… you’d be wrong.

The first thing I did was find a reusable bag to start collecting my trash from the day. I never hated coffee grounds until today, by the way. We’re to analyze the trash later, so more on that still to come.

The main part of Day 1 was to pay attention to our consumption and reduce the stuff we buy. I hadn’t expected this to be all that difficult for me. The economic downturn of recent years has made me thrifty (read: cheap as hell), so it wasn’t like I had to stop myself from my usual Sunday afternoon trip to the mall. But I would have gone grocery shopping, and I didn’t.

Grocery shopping on the weekends has almost become a habit for me. I jot down a menu for the week for lunches and dinners, and then I shop. If I’m buying too much to carry in a couple of bags, I do drive to the store, but I always go to the store that’s closest to me. And I always take my stash of reusable bags. I shop green, baby, don’t think I don’t.

But this particular Sunday, as I read through the Sierra Club’s pamphlet on reducing consumption, I started to wonder if I could get by for a week without buying groceries. Could we live on what was already in the house? I’m always struggling to find room for what I bring home from the grocery store, so what exactly is it that’s in the way?

I went through the kitchen and realized we had more than enough food for breakfast, lunches and dinners for the entire week. A forage in the one cupboard alone resulted in a scone mix I’d forgotten about – I baked those up – and several nearly empty boxes of cereal that I combined with the rest of a box of raisins and made into granola. The cereal boxes I folded up and put in with my cardboard recycling. Breakfast was done for a few days. 

Soup mixes, a can of tuna, a few pieces of fruit forgotten in the crisper (it makes me wonder why I even use the crisper. I think I just like to say crisper), some chicken thighs abandoned in the back of the freezer, pasta, potatoes, a frozen stir fry, something I didn’t recognize but I’m sure is probably edible … we had more than enough in the house already to comfortably survive the week. We’ll be doing more on food later in the week, and much of what I learned today will come in handy then, I’m pretty sure. How very like me to work ahead and then gloat about it. This may be why none of the other kids ever came to my birthday parties.

Anyway, I spent the rest of the afternoon fixing up an old skirt I’d tossed on the floor of my closet when the zipper broke. I took the busted zipper out (actually remembering to stick it in my bag of trash) and instead of running to the store for a new zipper, stitched the sides together with bit of stretchy elastic from one of Guy’s old socks that had been bound for the garbage. Then I added a few funky buttons from the bottom of my sewing box. I now have the coolest looking skirt that I can’t wait to wear today, and I didn’t go out and buy it.

So overall, it was an exciting, rejuvenating day, and I didn’t spend a dime. Now I can’t wait to analyze my trash! Wow, there’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear myself say.

When I explained that the No Impact Experiment is a one-week carbon cleanse designed to help us learn to live a happier life that will result in a happier earth, he agreed it sounded like a good idea.

But, as he pointed out, we already live pretty green. I take the train to work, we use fabric shopping bags, we recycle, I buy mostly earth-friendly household cleansers, I’ve been using Glad Rags for ten years. How much greener can we live?

And that is the challenge I will be addressing starting tomorrow, which is Day 1 of the No Impact Experiment. More people are becoming aware of their carbon footprint. More of us are striving to make lifestyle choices that are better for us and better for the Earth. Does that mean we are already living as green as we can? Somehow… I think I am about to get quite an education.

If you’d like to sign up to do this with me - and a big hug to those of you who already have – there’s still time. Click here to visit the Sierra Club’s website and sign up. And don’t worry - there’s no granulated lecithin involved.

(Oh, and if you didn’t hear Rita Moreno’s voice when you read the headline above, it just means you’re too young for my humor.)

*Update!* I’ve heard from several people, here and on Facebook, who want to do this with me. How awesome are you?! Let’s do it!