REDUCE YOUR CARBON FOOTPRINT

In addition to striving to reduce your personal emissions, becoming carbon neutral at the household level is one way to exercise this responsibility.

Don’t try to change your whole life overnight. You’ll only get frustrated. Begin with small steps. Small steps can be increased and eventually, you’ll develop new habits and the desire to change your lifestyle.

A carbon footprint is a measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide.

A carbon footprint is made up of two parts, the direct / primary footprint and the indirect / secondary footprint.

1. The primary footprint is a measure of direct emissions of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels including domestic energy consumption and transportation (e.g. car and plane).

2. The secondary footprint is a measure of the indirect CO2 emissions from the whole lifecycle of products we use – those associated with their manufacture and eventual breakdown.

Tips to Reduce Your Primary Footprint

• Vacations – don’t fly.
• Electricity – sign up for renewable energy programs through your power utlity.
• Natural gas – try using solar water heating. This, alone, can reduce your gas bill by up to 70% over a year.
• Daily commute – use public transport as much as possible. Find out about your local bus services and then use it. Ride a bike.
• Cars – sign up for rideshares.

Tips to Reduce Your Secondary Footprint
When you buy goods, think about where they were made and the methods used to manufacture them. Items that have high emissions in manufacturing or delivery should be avoided when ever possible. Things such as:

• Bottled water – tap water is safe to drink in most European and North American countries, yet people still insist on buying bottled water. If the bottle is labeled as being from volcanic springs, you can bet that it has probably been imported from some distance. Imagine the carbon footprint of the flight / shipping of that bottle of water! And that's before adding in the emissions produced from making the bottle and / or recycling it.

• Food and drink from far-off countries – When you go to the supermarket, look at the label to identify which country the food is from.

• Drink – Think twice about buying a bottle of wine from the other side of the world. You may be able to find much more local wine, which will have traveled far fewer miles.

Better still, try growing your own fruit and vegetables in your own garden. Planting an apple tree will not only provide you with lots of fruit, and a zero carbon footprint, but the tree itself with breathe in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This fruit is effectively carbon negative.

• Meat eating – reduce your consumption of meat, especially red meat.

• Clothes from far-off lands – check clothing labels before you buy. If they come from more than 1,000 miles away, keep looking!

Overly packaged items – avoid goods and services that have unnecessary packaging.

 

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