Starting Assessment -- Environmental

So before starting our little experiment, I want to have good idea of where we are starting from. This month, I'm focusing on environmental issues.

We live in the suburbs in Portland, Oregon, primarily because the house is close to where the hubby works. I work from home, so my commute is nonexistent. We previously lived in North Portland, but after I started working from home (cutting out a 30 minute commute), hubby's 40 minute commute also started to seem a little foolish. We moved to the suburbs to be closer to hubby's work. The area we live in is within walking distance to a grocery, library, and restaurants. Our oldest son, A, goes to preschool three blocks from our house. When the weather is marginally decent, we walk to school.

We have access to tremendous recycling facilities -- we have a big rolling bin that we just put everything in (except glass). The only drawback is that they pick up recycling only every other week. We recycle pretty much everything that I know can be recycled.

We compost, but in all honesty, we end up putting a lot out in the yard debris for pick-up (which is composted at a municipal composting facility), just due to the size of the yard and number of trees. I sort of hate composting -- the compost bins are down a flight of stairs, and through a bit of soaked grass (we are in Portland, after all). The composting needs some serious attention at our house -- and I'll be honest, some food waste ends up in the garbage because it tends to get overwhelming.

Hubby and I were concerned about the amount of energy our house uses, so we did an energy audit earlier this year. We've implemented pretty much all of the weatherizing recommendations (caulking, insulating vents, energy-efficient curtains, etc.), but not things like replacing windows, furnaces and whatnot. Those we will replace when things need to be replaced, but at this point everything is in good working order.

We have a second son who is in diapers (he's about 7 months old). We are using disposable diapers, as the research I did indicated that cloth diapers use a significant amount of water while disposables are a waste issue. We started out using "environmentally sensitive" diapers, but couldn't find any in Baby's current size. We went to the regular disposable diapers just because the kid needed something on his bottom.