A little about us...

I should be clear that I am not doing this alone. My wonderful girlfriend Amy has agreed, acquiesced enthusiastically, to be a partner in this experiment. We live in Laramie, WY. A small town by many standards, large by Wyoming standards. However many of the assumptions about living a "sustainable" lifestyle make certain assumptions about locality and available resources. We will discuss this in days to come. We also rent our current home. When I took a recent carbon footprint quiz it suggested I could one of the biggest impacts I could make would be to replace my appliances. (There are many calculators available, simply google "carbon footprint" and you will get a number of options. I will try to come up with a list of the better ones.) Unfortunately buying energy star rated appliances is not an option on a grad student salary and makes no sense for a rental. I will work on the landlord, yes. But the number of changes a renter can make is limited compared to that of the home owner. This presents one of the challenges but is also an opportunity to really look for small changes that we can make.