Poor Kermit. He has had a tough time being green – just like me.
I mean, I thought I was green. I recycle. I try to donate rather
than trash items I no longer use.
“It’s not easy being green.” – Kermit the Frog
Poor Kermit. He has had a tough time being green – just like me. I mean, I thought I was green. I recycle. I try to donate rather than trash items I no longer use. Last week when I was considering painting the bathroom, I even got paint samples that had low C02. Or maybe C20. Whatever. It was low something to save the environment. Of course, I haven’t painted the bathroom yet. But when I do, I’ll be saving the environment while doing it. Not to mention making the bathroom aesthetically pleasing.
Bathroom paint aside, I’ve been worried about my family’s carbon footprint – well, I started to worry about it after I figured out what it was. Turns out everyone has a carbon footprint. And, for those of you who, like me, aren’t even sure what a carbon footprint is, let me give you a hint. It’s not a carbon gray shoe. In fact, your footprint doesn’t have anything to do with feet, which I find to be unnecessarily confusing. I mean, why call it a footprint, if it has nothing to do with my feet? Why not call it something else, maybe something informative like “crud you spew into the air from everything you do?”
Anyway, despite my misgivings about the name, I took the footprint test at a Web site I found after an exhausting 2.5 seconds of research. And unfortunately I discovered I am no Kermit the Frog. In fact, I may be closer to Miss Piggy. Shamefully, my entire family had an estimated emission of 86. The U.S. average is 80. Now personally, I blame all this on Harry and Junior. I mean, please. If any two people on earth should be blamed for too much emission, it should be them. It can’t possibly be me. It’s never me. It’s always them. And sometimes the dog.
In any event, after discovering that my family is made up of horrifying Earth destroyers and ozone layer killers, I decided I had to do something about it. I mean, I couldn’t just sit around knowing that the entire Sontag family was responsible for killing trees or carbon or whatever we’re responsible for.
And I learned we could offset our footprint to become something called carbon neutral, which basically means we offset as many emissions as we make. Now I don’t know about you, but in our house that’s virtually impossible, especially on make-your-own-burrito-night. We just can’t be neutral on that night. In fact, I fully believe that it is the very existence of this night that has thrown our emissions up to 86.
But you know, I just can’t give up. I told both Harry and Junior that we would be suspending make-your-own-burrito-night until we had an emission of 80. Well, there was quite an uproar, I’m telling you. Turns out they both love make-your-own-burrito-night because honestly, it’s the only thing I have ever cooked without having the smoke detectors go off. But I was determined. I mean, everyone has to do his or her part to save the ozone layer, right?
So I took the burritos away. And a month later I checked our carbon footprint. And it was now 88. I couldn’t believe it. I took away beans, for Pete’s sake. If anything could lower emissions it should be removing beans from my family’s diet.
Unfortunately, beans have apparently nothing to do with becoming carbon neutral. So Harry and Junior could have make-your-own-burrito-night every night and make all the emissions they wanted and still we would have had a huge carbon footprint. Obviously, something other than eliminating beans had to be done.
So I started doing more research and it turns out you can offset your carbon footprint. Now here’s the shocking part. You don’t have to offset your carbon footprint by using those funny looking light bulbs or driving a Prius or making less trash. No, it turns out you can pay for the privilege of reducing your carbon footprint. In fact, for the low, low price of $143.33 per month, my family can rest easy knowing we are finally carbon neutral.
Call me cynical, but somehow I don’t think that’s the way to make a greener planet. In fact, I think I’ll take that $143.33 and invest in some funny looking light bulbs. And maybe someday soon, we’ll be more like Kermit and less like Miss Piggy.
