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Pat yourself on the back for using more compact fluorescent light bulbs, but give yourself a kick in the pants for still jumping in your car alone and driving to work.

That's the gist of the results of a 2006 Statistics Canada survey released yesterday that asked more than 28,000 households what they've been doing to make their homes environmentally friendly.

Results suggest that we've started to pay more attention to small energy-saving measures, but we have a long way to go when it comes to bigger sacrifices.

Since the last StatsCan survey of this sort in 1994, the percentage of Canadians using at least one compact fluorescent light bulb tripled from 19 per cent to 59 per cent.

Households that used programmable thermostats, which automatically adjust temperature setting in a room to cut down energy use, increased from 16 per cent to 42 per cent. And Canadians seem to be composting more, with a four percentage-point increase since 1994 - from 23 to 27.

"There's an increased awareness of environmental concern," says John Marshall, the StatsCan senior analyst in charge of the survey. "What the survey tried to get at was those behaviours and practices that are in response to environmental changes."

Now for the kick in the pants.

Nationally, 57 per cent of people who travel to work commuted in a motor vehicle by themselves in the warmer months of the year.

Fifty-eight per cent of households travelled at least 20,000 kilometres a year in their vehicles, and 12 per cent travelled more than 40,000 kilometres. One in 10 Canadian households had three or more vehicles.

"The result ... is not surprising considering the lack of public investment in public transit," says Miriam Diamond, professor of environmental science at the University of Toronto. She added that federal and provincial governments need to invest more in public transit than they do in roadways in order to decrease vehicle use.

In Canada's urban areas, the worst offenders were Saskatoon, Abbotsford, B.C., and Windsor, Ont., which had the highest proportion of people travelling alone in a motor vehicle to work. Victoria and Ottawa-Gatineau had the lowest proportions.

"Canadians have this idea that we're green and we care about the environment," says Stephen Hazell, executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada, an environmental lobby group. "I don't know that that's true. I think in large measure we're all talk and little action."

When it comes to water use, the number of Canadians who use water-saving showerheads increased to 60 per cent from 42 per cent in 1994. And 41 per cent of Canadians now use water-saving toilets, compared with 15 per cent in 1994. Almost three in 10 households are more likely to guzzle bottled water than tap water.

There was only a marginal decrease in pesticide use across the country - from 31 to 29 per cent - but Quebec showed a vast improvement. Because of recent regulations, pesticide use was cut in half, from 30 to 15 per cent.

"There's much more interest in sustainable lifestyles in Quebec than there is in other places in Canada," Mr. Hazell says.

The survey suggests Canadians will respond to environmentally friendly practices when the cost comes cheap, he adds. A case in point is the increased use of fluorescent bulbs, which he attributes mainly to the less expensive versions sold now compared to 10 years ago.