If you plant trees, drive a gas-saving car and recycle religiously, wouldn't it be nice to know how much greenhouse gas you're preventing? Now you can find out online.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has produced a calculator that converts your conservation work into familiar terms.

For example, if a typical household switched all incandescent light bulbs to Energy Star-qualified compact fluorescent light bulbs, it would save about 75% of the lighting electricity use, or about 1,463 kilowatt hours per year.

What does that really mean? Read on.

After five years, these savings equal:

• Saving about 10,289 pounds of CO2 emissions,


• Conserving 530 gallons of gasoline,


• Saving 11 barrels of oil,


• Planting 120 tree seedlings, or


• Recycling 1.6 tons of waste.