$16 = The Cost of a Good Night Sleep

Thanks to ThisMom I have become an EcoMom. If you haven't yet read about the EcoMom Challenge, you must, must, must. Global Warming is one of those things that keeps me up at night. Seriously. I work everyday so that I can help to ensure that my kids will have a good quality of life in the future yet I worry about what kind of world they will be left with. But I tend to avoid reading or hearing too much about the subject because it just seems so out of my hands, you know? So overwhelming. And that is why I LOVE the EcoMom Challenge. There are 82 million moms in the US alone and if we all make some basic changes -- some of them very easy to do -- then we WILL have an impact. I just love the idea of a bunch of mom's getting together to save the planet! The website includes a list of 10 easy things you can do -- that anyone can do. Go ahead! Have a look.

SO! Over the weekend I went out and bought 16 compact, flourescent light bulbs ($2/each with a life of 7 years per!) and replaced almost all the regular light bulbs in my house. Then I had a little family meeting with Nik and RT and we agreed to make this a priority at our house. I showed them the website and asked them for ideas on what we can do to help save the penguins and the polar bears. We came up with a list of ideas, wrote them down and each of us signed it.

Then we visited this site and calculated our Carbon Footprint -- that is, the amount of carbon dioxide our family produces per year. I am happy to say that we scored in the Much Less Than Average category even before you factor in the light bulbs. Our family produces 31,117 lbs of Carbon Dioxide each year, which still seems like a lot to me. And the cost of that is only $16/month. That is, the cost of purchasing clean energy that will offset that same amount of Carbon Dioxide, is only $16. And that, my friends, makes us Carbon Neutral!

So if you've ever felt like climate change was something that you couldn't do much about and if you are a mother, or if you have a mother, or if you would like to be a mother or if you know a mother -- then what are you waiting for?