Earth Day 2008!

Today is Earth Day! Take a moment to review your life to see how you can make small changes that can have large impacts on the environment. Explore walking, riding a bike, or taking public transportation to work. Eliminate unnecessary driving trips for groceries, errands, etc, by going to the store only once a week, or by patronizing stores closer to home, allowing you to walk.

Personally I am researching making my own biodiesel from waste vegetable oil (used oil from restaurants) and also installing a solar water heating system for both domestic hot water and radiant heat in our home's family room. There are some good loan programs here in Montana to help finance the solar hot water systems, and we love the reduction in natural gas this can provide. We'd love to add photovoltaics to the home but just can't justify the expense right now.

Detour has just moved to Helena, MT, from Denver, and we are exploring how to minimize our carbon footprint in our new home and office. Helena is a small enough town that we can get most places on foot or bicycle. Additionally, our new office will be centrally located in downtown Helena where it will be easy to access by all staff. My wife and I will be able to carpool on days when we need to drive (only 1 mile from home). We are really happy to eliminate vehicle miles from our daily lives, and in fact have just cut down to only one car.