So here is how it began...

Well, those of you that know me will be well aware that I am an avid fan of gadgets, gizmos, fast food, faster women, booze, fun and general malarkery, but while on my honeymoon recently I read a book. It was very good actually. Once I finished that one I read another, Crap at the Environment by Mark Watson. That's where it all started to go wrong (not the honeymoon, so far Sarah and I are still very happily married and at least 85% of the time we are on speaking terms - I have slept on the sofa a couple of times mind...). Anyway, I digress (though Sarah plays a big part in all that will follow on here...), so there I was, reading this book and realising, "hmmm, this guy is as bad as me at the environment, maybe I should try a bit harder..." while at the same time thanking my lucky stars I didn't share his welsh accent.

I had bought that Al Gore film, I even tried to watch it once, but never really got into it and switched back to watching American Dad again.

But now I was sure I was ready, I am going to make a difference!!! Every week I am going to take a little step towards become better at the environment, and as sure as hell, I was going to tell everyone about it!

Once I finished the book, Sarah read it and, since she is a much better person than me and has a lot more substance to her than my random outbursts, she came on board which meant I was actually going to have to do this thing.

So what have we done so far? Well, as per the book, one of the first places I went was www.actonco2.co.uk to get a bit of an idea of my own carbon footprint. Superb I thought, about 3 tons, I am probably about average, just cut it down a bit and I'll be aces. Then Sarah did it for both of us and it turns out it was closer to 15 tons!!!! I am sure mine is still 3, so my wife MUST be using 12 tons all by herself. And she doesn't even use hairspray!

What happened next was almost entirely out of the book, we decided to set ourselves a challenge each week and try to stick to it. These challenges have been pretty good so far, I am avoiding any that involve being smelly or anything. Environment light i guess.

So here it is, my environmentally challenged blog to describe, hopefully encourage, probably end in disaster, but will maybe make you laugh along the way. The thing is, I would really like you to join in these challenges too and suggest your own. I realise that I am rubbish at this, so if any of you know stuff I need to know, please feel free to tell me.

Thanks to the crowd at The Well and Heather, Janice and Lucy for already getting me going... Let's see where it goes!