When I was feeding the cats this morning, I saw the reflection of the mountain of paper towels that I just stacked in their room yesterday. A ton of bleached paper towels. Yuck. It is hard to care for as many animals as we do in a sustainable manner that we can afford. Disposing of their waste in plastic bags, using paper towels to clean up their messes indoors, buying factory farm beef to make their food. Besides heating our home with a woodstove, I think the pets are what increases our carbon footprint the most. Your carbon footprint is the amount of carbon that your lifestyle produces. It encompasses everything - the food you eat, the car you drive, the way you heat your home, where your clothes and everything in your home comes from, and the list goes on and on.
When we only had two dogs, we bought non-bleached recycled paper towels and that made me feel less guilty about using them. But with this many pets indoors, we just can't afford it anymore. And we used to buy organic food for all of the pets, which hopefully was made with non feed-lot beef, but we can't afford that either. Making my own in bulk with non-organic beef is what we can afford right now.
If you are interested in calculating your own carbon footprint, The Nature Conservancy has a carbon calculator. And if you are interested in off-setting some of your carbon emissions, this website has some interesting ideas.
For now, that mountain of paper towels will just make me feel guilty every day. But I have to keep in mind that I am providing a good home to many pets that were unwanted by someone else. The world isn't black and white, even though these paper towels may be.
When I first heard about my carbon footprint, I stopped buying bananas - so much fuel and energy is used in their transportation and they totally don't fit in a trying-to-eat-local diet. But they are a great healthy food for little fingers, so they are back in our shopping cart. Sigh. As I said, its not black and white - sometimes it is yellow.
What changes could you make in your life to reduce your carbon footprint?