July 2013 Coffee News

-Climate Action - Transportation

Happy Independence Day!! We hope you are enjoying this celebratory holiday and the lovely summer weather we have been gifted with these past few weeks. We are heading out later today to join with Cathy's family near Stillwater. Before we do, we wanted to send you a quick reminder about our July coffee delivery route coming up next week. And since this is a time when many people travel, we offer a few transportation resources for your consideration as well.

Climate Action - Transportation

This spring, when our household started focusing more heavily on what we might do about climate change, we completed one of the many carbon footprint calculators out there on the web. We thought our old drafty house would be our biggest carbon contributor, but it wasn't! Turns out our household's transportation methods made up 2/3 of our family's carbon footprint! While we still have plans to make improvements to our house, the carbon calculator got us thinking hard about our cars (as did the spike in gas prices above $4.00 back in May!)

Cathy works most days from home and Guillermo has a very short commute to his work at the U of MN -- but we do have three kids and coffee too of course, to haul around. Since Guillermo is quite handy, we've been able to get by with used cars that were inexpensive to buy, but were not so good on fuel efficiency. At first, we were doubtful that we could find a better option that we could afford. Turns out, we were able to get a used Prius that we are paying for in part with the sale of one of our used vehicle while financing the rest with a monthly payment approximately the same as our savings on gas, making the change pretty much budget neutral!

Here are a few of the resources we found helpful as we explored our transportation options.

• First of all the carbon footprint calculators. We did one offered by the Center for Biological Diversity. But there are others, including the Global Footprint Network and one offered by the Nature Conservancy.
• In researching and comparing types of cars, we found the US Department of Energy's www.fueleconomy.gov website very helpful. They also have a fuel cost calculator that will tell you how much you might save if you can improve your mpg.
• Here in Minnesota, there is a company called ReGo that offers a transportation audit, a vehicle finder service, and classes to improve the energy efficiency of your existing vehicles (and they install plug-in conversions for hybrid cars).
• And finally, there are tons of resources to help all of us more effectively use public transit, bicycles and our own feet to get around. This Green Life has several interesting blogs on the topic. Pedal Minnesota seems to be the place to go for anything you might want to know about biking (and the source of those bike friendly stations that seem to be popping up). And Bike Walk Twin Cities has walking and biking maps and much more.

Have fun finding new ways to get around!