Reducing our Carbon Footprint and Living on a Budget

When we decided to live on our boat for the next three years, we also thought it would be a good time to make a real effort to reduce our carbon footprint. We were dismayed when we saw the news about the 'plastic island' in the middle of the Pacific. We talked about what changes we needed to make to ensure that we didn't continue to contribute to the mess we are making of our environment.

The obvious thing is to stop buying products in plastic bottles and products that are over packaged. We stopped buying bottled water and bought a Dupont water filter for our tap. Every morning I fill two half liter reusable bottles with the filtered water. This usually lasts us for the day. We still buy our milk in 2 liter plastic. We had planned to buy UHT milk in Tetra Pak packages, but the price is often triple that of pasteurized milk. Here, the fact that we are living on a budget has overruled. I don't understand why they have to sell long life milk at such a premium.

We also started buying green cleaning products such as biodegradable soaps, shampoo and cleaning products. These products are also often more expensive but the price difference is more around the 20% range which we think is more acceptable.

Our boat didn't come equipped with solar panels or wind generation. We have seen a lot of our fellow sailors using wind and sun as energy sources. Something for us to look in to, but it is also a cost that we had not built into our budget. We have to calculate the ROI before we make the decision.

We are looking for any other ideas on how we can reduce our carbon footprint while living on a budget. The two don't always go hand in hand.