Welcome to the world of low-footprint thinking.

Welcome, this is my first foray into the blogosphere, so forgive the blunders along the way.

I'm a professor of environmental science and anthropology at a college in Pennsylvania, and teach about issues related to sustainability almost daily.

I decided a few years back that I would slowly work elements of my teaching into as much of my real life as possible, and start calculating the impact that these changes have in comparison to the average American and their lifestyle.

Go to myfootprint.org and calculate your environmental footprint- mine, despite composting, energy savings in the home, home gardening, buying all meat from local growers, etc, still came out to be 4.9 planets if all humans lived the lifestyle equal to mine.

This is untenable.

My first target for major change is transportation: I only live 5.5 miles to work, and have decided to start cycling instead of driving my old Dodge Dakota (@14mpg). Granted I drive it so little (less than 5k/yr) it pales compared to what many Americans do, it still is a lot of gas and pollution.

Enter the Xtracycle. The good folks at this great company make an awesome product for commuting by bicycle- the FreeRadical. You can go with complete bikes, but I had a really cool vintage mountain bike I wanted to re-use (again, less consumption = smaller carbon footprint). Check out the photos in the next post for the build project and final product.

Cheers!
R