In an effort to jump-start our 2012 challenge goal of becoming a zero-waste household, we’ve become part of the Three Actions project. The three ACTIONS Project is a community-action program designed to “support individuals in developing sustainable lifestyle habits and to capture individual experiences to inform greater change in community services, design, and public policy.”

We heard about the program through the Alliance for Sustainability. We checked out the website, and especially the menu of actions, and we liked the structured approach. If you click on each action, it provides information and a series of worksheets to help you develop a baseline and track your progress.

Together we’ve chosen to:

• Eliminate all waste (our original goal for 2012)
• Reduce our plug usage by 33%

Leslie has also chosen to eliminate food spoilage and waste (think garden produce) and Peter has chosen to live within his water budget.

We haven’t finished week 1 (baseline measurements) but so far we’re having a bit of trouble getting our heads around measuring. Waste and food waste haven’t been hard, but understanding how much rainwater falls on our house (natural water budget) was difficult. And we haven’t finished filling out the forms to understand electrical usage for each appliance. But we’re plugging away.

Let’s see what we can do in the next 60 days.