A few days ago, Nell, my mother and I embarked on the long trek home for winter break. We drove from Madison, WI to Pittsburgh, PA, passing through more corn fields than I care to recognize.

Nell is the name of my Subaru wagon. She’s 10 years old, sometimes stubborn, but always faithful. On the highway, she gets 28-30 miles per gallon; in the city, about 20. Fold the rear seats down flat and she has lots of cargo room–enough for multiple bikes, skis, packs, bouldering pads, 22 bottles of wine, and a bag of clementines.

The drive was a long and fairly uneventful. To pass the time I developed some ’statistics’ of our journey.

10.5 hours (with stops for gas and lunch) / 613 miles / 7 clementines / 67 cows / 3 large birds of prey / 2 tanks of gas / 3 car plants (GM, Chrysler, Chevrolet) / 11 toll plazas / 5 podcasts of A Prairie Home Companion / 14 police cars / 0 fights or raised voices : ) / 550 lbs of CO2 emissions

550 lbs of CO2 emissions? Yikes. That’s only for one way.

I used TerraPass, an online footprint calculator and offset service, to estimate my carbon output from the drive. TerraPass is a great tool for computing transportation expenditures because it lets you calculate specific trips rather than yearly driving patterns. Had we flown instead, an additional 400 lbs of carbon would have been released into the atmosphere. When we can’t fully see the pollution, it is difficult to recognize how much our actions actually affect our surroundings.

Just for kicks, I used another footprint calculator to monitor my life as a whole. Of all the tests out there, I found that The Nature Conservancy’s calculator is the easiest to use–it is thorough but not overly specific (no need to have energy bills on hand) and includes a variety of topics in the calculation. TerraPass only covers energy use in its estimate;  for an accurate estimate, things like food consumption, waste and recycling also need to be considered.

According to The Nature Conservancy’s test, my footprint is equal to the average American’s. Now, before you judge, let it be known that I am on my school’s rowing team and that our regattas are in places like Texas, California, Tennessee, and Florida. How do we get to these locations? We fly, but that’s a story for another day.

So what do you do when your footprint is bigger than your shoe?  My shoe size is a 7.  My carbon footprint, a 27.

Both TerraPass and The Nature Conservancy offer opportunities to donate online as a way of offsetting carbon usage. Donations are wonderful (and ’tis the season) but typically are a one time deal and fail to translate into action. My recommendation is this: gather some paper, a pencil, and things like energy bills or gasoline receipts and sit down at a table. Think about your life as a whole and then develop specific categories to explore your consumption. These categories can be things like food and diet, driving patterns, appliance usage, waste, recycling, and compost habits, or travel.

Next, focus on each individual category.  For example, in the food and diet category you could explore topics such as food origin, growing practices, and packaging. For transportation, investigative how often you drive, how far, and whether it is city or highway travel.

The final step is to think about ways to reduce your footprint. Taking the food example above, explore your city for food cooperatives or farmers markets (buying local reduces the carbon footprint from transporting food) or buy in bulk to reduce packaging. For daily transportation habits, consider carpooling, public transportation, or self-powered transport (i.e. walk or bicycle). Begin with just a few small changes in behavior and gradually work up to enforcing changes in all categories. Each step, no matter the size, will help reduce your footprint and keep the environment healthy.