Green Wednesday: Rate Your Home’s Environmental Impact
Email To Friend | share this article | Posted on March 26th in Green Remodeling by Renee.
This month, Low Impact Living (LIL) launched their Environmental Impact Calculator, which is free and ready to use on the LIL website. The calculator can measure your home’s carbon footprint, tracking energy, water, wastewater, trash, and stormwater movement. The calculator will need some basic information, such as your zip code, the square footage of your home, the number of cars you own, and other details, including water, electricity, and natural gas usage, the percentage of fluorescent lights in your home, and the number of loads of laundry you do per week. Once your score is assessed, you can compare your home’s environmental impact against that of others in your neighborhood and across the country. In addition, the calculator recommends projects based on your inputs, helping you green specific areas of your home where it’s most needed.
If you register when you use the calculator, you can save your results, log in again at a future date, and measure your home’s progress once you adjust your thermostat, install low-flow showerheads, or the like. My own Low Impact Living Index, or LILI, is 56, which means I’m pretty low impact. However, the calculator recommended that I reduce hot water temperature, install a solar hot water heater, and plant shade trees, among other things. I’m not really sure how it came up with the projects it came up with based on the information I provided, but the suggestions are sound and come with cost estimates and annual savings projections.
If you like the idea of the Environmental Impact Calculator, also try ZeroFootprint.net, based on a similar idea. Here, you’ll be required to register, free of charge, to measure your carbon footprint and receive subsequent tips. See how your numbers compare from one site to the other! Happy greening.
Got greening to do? Save yourself the trouble of finding qualified window, flooring, and kitchen contractors. We’ll get you estimates from pre-screened experts who specialize in every area of the home.
March 26th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
This a powerful & useful tool. More people need to think about the impact their own home has on the environement and this is one good step in that direction.
March 27th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
I agree, it’s a great place to start. All these years, cars have been getting all the attention for CO2 emissions, and finally, our own homes are in the spectrum, too.