My new favorite site (besides GBT, of course) is called Low Impact Living.com! They recently announced their new Household Environmental Impact Calculator and rating system to help homeowners understand their environmental impacts and give advice on how they can reduce their strain on the planet. I'm usually this enthusiastic about these type of calculators, but they do help you stay aware of your home's energy performance.
This new calculator allows homeowners to enter information about their homes and consumption patterns (e.g. energy use, water use, house size, auto use, etc.) and get a full picture of their environmental impacts. The tool calculates not only the user's carbon footprint but ALL environmental impacts— including energy use, water consumption, trash production, urban run-off production and more. It is the most comprehensive environmental impact calculator available online.
The user also receives a "LILI" or Low Impact Living Index for their household. The LILI is a rating of their overall environmental impact that ranks them relative to other households of their size in their region. For example the average LILI is 100, and if a household received a LILI of 50, they would have a below-average, or positive, environmental impact. If their LILI is 200, they have work to do. The goal is to reach as low of a LILI as possible.
My LILI score was 46, which may be a little low, as I may have been overly optimistic about the efficiencies of my furnace and appliances. At the end of the evaluation the calculator provided me with several recommendations that I should implement to improve the sustainability of my home. For example, installing sink aerators ($3) in my bathroom and kitchen sinks can save 209 lbs of annual CO2 emissions, along with saving 1,460 gallons of water. Not bad for $3 bucks!
If you don't want to go through the calculator, you can skip right to the "Green Projects" section, where you can click on the area of your home for green home improvement recommendations. There is also a section for learning more about the various green alternatives available to you. Many homeowners have no idea that in many states they can get $5,000 in incentives to put up solar panels, or that they can buy green power from their utility. Low Impact Living provides this kind of guidance to help understand the costs and incentives for green projects to help consumers make informed decisions.
Visit: lowimpactliving.com