Great thread! I missed it until now - I guess I don't check the AAM section often enough.
I've been trying to chip away at this for years. As others have pointed out, reduced impact usually goes hand-in-hand with reduced expenses and stress.
Our greatest hits so far:
1. Ground down the electricity bill by improving a few things every year over ten years (sealed cracks in a stairwell when carpet was being replaced, LEDs, hang curtain across basement stair well during the winter, made windows seal better, upgraded a few appliances and hot water heater, programmable thermostats, etc.). Our electricity bill is still 20% lower despite 25% higher rates.
2. Cut my commute from 42km to 10km roundtrip a year ago, and am now trying a car-free month to prove that we can drop to one car, which I'm planning to do at the beginning of September.
3. Have my son convinced that walking, transit or biking are superior to driving.
4. Pushed my old company to keep investigating upgrading lighting, and it finally got done. It worked out to over $100,000/year in savings with less than a two-year payback. Convincing other people or organizations to make a change has huge leverage compared to personal changes.
5. Cut most beef and lamb from my diet for health and footprint reasons.
6. Trying to do all errands and social stuff by bike or public transit.
7. Drastically cut landfill contribution (sort and recycle beyond our city's requirements, compost, consume less in general).
Some tips I've picked up from this thread:
1. Get metal filter for Aeropress. It's among our smaller wastes, but if I can get rid of the paper filters and get better coffee, what's not to love about that?
2. Go beyond just using the kill-a-what from the library, but try an IR thermostat and other techniques.
Plans for the future:
1. Follow through on the plan to drop to one car.
2. When the one car needs replacement, it's EV or bust. I don't plan to ever buy another ICE vehicle.
3. Set up the fan on our gas fireplace to run automatically when the fireplace is on and shut off when the fireplace is off.
4. Try a winter without using the fireplace at all to see what happens to our electricity bill. Unless we change something else, I know it will be huge: this winter was unusually cold and the effect is very non-linear - once it gets below about -2C our electricity goes up quickly even with the gas fireplace.
5. We don't plan to live in this place forever, so when we do move, target a place that is or can be super-insulated and optimized in other ways.
6. Push our local city to continue and accelerate some of the good improvements they've been making. Maybe even try to become a City Councillor as a fun FIRE activity.
