Low Impact Week: Day 7!

Hmmmm, OK how did I do during Low Impact Week?

Water: we used 375 L (99 gallons) per day over the week (for the five of us); our usual average is 387 L (102 gallons)/day. Not much of a drop, but really it was only me that was making a concerted effort to save water, so I guess it was just me that was saving the extra 12L a day. It wasn't much and I'm a bit disappointed to be honest, but it gives me added incentive to do better in future, LOL. It makes it hard when my 3 year old prefers to use the full-flush button on the toilet (sigh!) and usually doesn't turn the tap off completely after washing her hands - walking into the bathroom to find the tap has been dribbling water down the sink for the last half an hour is pretty frustrating!

Energy: Our average electricity use is 20.9 kWh/ day; during this week we used an average of 20.1 kWh. Again, not much of a dint! Reducing our electricity use is a constant battle for me - a battle with my family that is! My eldest daughter is only 5 so it's understandable that they forget to turn the lights of TV off when they leave a room, but it's especially galling when I come home from grocery shopping at night to find every light in the house on and two TVs going with nobody watching them... Very frustrating when DH knows how hard I'm working to try and get our energy use down.

Transport: Er, yes well, *cough*. I usually drive an average of 67 km (42 miles) per week, but this week involved a couple of unexpected trips and it's been raining the last two days - great for my veggie garden! - which has necessitated driving to school and back. So I've ended up doing, *ahem* 123 km (76 miles)... Does it count if my car is carbon neutral, LOL? (I pay for carbon offsets through Greenfleet).

Other goals: My other goals I listed for the week were more or less on track, as follows :-)
* Eat no meat meals - tick
* Eat four vegan main meals - tick
* Cut out all other dairy during the day except for one cup of coffee - tick
* Cut my 4 minute showers to 2 minutes - 5 out of 7 days (hey, it's cold!)
* Only use conserved water from the kitchen, shower or greywater on my fruit and vegetables - It's been raining! So tick :-)
* Drive the car for only absolutely essential purposes - see above :-(
* Insist on homemade or second hand birthday presents - tick!
* Buy nothing except food - as I mentioned the other day, there were a few emergency items I had to buy this week, but I did OK all things considered.
* Buy no processed foods, including bread - almost a tick. DH bought me a birthday (cheese)cake!
* Buy no item that includes plastic in any form - Fail! My metaphorical hat is off once again to EnviroWoman for not buying any plastic this year! It's damn near impossible.
* Limit the use of the air-conditioning (heating) to 20 minutes of a morning - Fail. It's been very wintery here this week and DH has had it on for much longer than that in the mornings, plus he turned it on again the night I went out grocery shopping.

So, in all in all it was an interesting experiment! I didn't do nearly as well as I would have liked, but then I'm finding that I have gotten to the stage where I need to some up with some more innovative strategies to deal with my family and their bad habits. Ah well, how does that saying go? "Slowly, slowly catch a monkey". How did you all go?