Digital TV Transition

My carbon footprint is HUGE when it comes to electronics. I'm an audiophile geek. I love my soundsystem. It meant a lot more before I met Tara b/c she's not so interested and if she's home the system is usually playing at a volume too low to mean anything. :-(

I'll live but if I were only a bachelor again...

All that said I recently found out my footprint was bigger than I imagined. I have a big screen plasma, the biggest energy hog TV available. When I bought it I didn't know, plasmas looked much better than LCDs and that's what mattered.

If you follow the Green America's advice you can avoid my mistake.

See article here.

No TV Day

At the beginning of April Tara implemented a "no TV day". The goal was to have one dedicated day for not turning on the TV. Her point was that she felt she watched too much TV. She has lots of shows she keeps up with, I don't have that many but I do watch as many movies as she does. We didn't push ourselves too hard. We chose Wednesday. I get home from yoga around 8pm, she goes to bed about 9pm, so there isn't a lot of time to watch TV. I think its working well. Tara catches up on email or reading. I play/train with Johnders and listen to music.

The unintended consequences are reduction in energy usage. We have a hog of a TV. Its energystar rated but it is a 42" plasma...it uses lots of power and generates a lot of heat. So at least one day a week we are using a lot less energy.

One small step...