carbon footprint essay example

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Carbon Footprint Essay

Introduction:, concept of carbon footprints:, classifications of carbon footprints:, overview of ghg protocol scopes and emissions, methods of carbon footprints:, assessment standards for carbon footprints:, carbon footprint reduction and mitigation:, conclusion:.

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News from the Columbia Climate School

The 35 Easiest Ways to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

In the face of the recent National Climate Assessment report on the threats of climate change, the Trump administration continues to try to roll back environmental policies. Individuals, however, can make a difference by reducing their personal greenhouse gas emissions. While there are many ways to do this and save energy—such as insulating your home, putting up solar panels, and planting trees—the following are the simplest and easiest changes you can make. They require little effort or financial investment.

First calculate your carbon footprint

Your carbon footprint is the amount of greenhouse gases—including carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, fluorinated gases and others—that you produce as you live your life. The Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project determined that in order to hold the global temperature rise to 2˚C or less, everyone on earth will need to average an annual carbon footprint of 1.87 tons by 2050. Currently, the average U.S. per capita carbon footprint is 18.3 tons. By comparison, China’s per capita carbon emissions are 8.2 tons. We all have a ways to go to get to 1.87 tons.

Calculate your carbon footprint at carbonfootprint.com to find out how you’re doing. The EPA’s carbon footprint calculator can show how much carbon and money you will save by taking some of these steps.

Here are some of the easiest ways you can start to shrink your carbon footprint.

1. Eat low on the food chain. This means eating mostly fruits, veggies, grains, and beans. Livestock —meat and dairy—is responsible for 14.5 percent of manmade global greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from feed production and processing and the methane (25 times more potent than CO2 at trapping heat in the atmosphere over 100 years) that beef and sheep belch out. Every day that you forgo meat and dairy, you can reduce your carbon footprint by 8 pounds—that’s 2,920 pounds a year. You can start by joining Meatless Mondays .

2. Choose organic and local foods that are in season. Transporting food from far away, whether by truck, ship, rail or plane, uses fossil fuels for fuel and for cooling to keep foods in transit from spoiling.

3. Buy foodstuffs in bulk when possible using your own reusable container.

4. Reduce your food waste by planning meals ahead of time, freezing the excess and reusing leftovers.

5. Compost your food waste if possible. (If you live in New York City, you can find a compost drop-off site here.

6. Don’t buy fast fashion. Trendy, cheap items that go out of style quickly get dumped in landfills where they produce methane as they decompose. Currently, the average American discards about 80 pounds of clothing each year, 85 percent of which ends up in landfills. In addition, most fast fashion comes from China and Bangladesh, so shipping it to the U.S. requires the use of fossil fuels. Instead, buy quality clothing that will last.

7. Even better, buy vintage or recycled clothing at consignment shops.

8. Wash your clothing in cold water. The enzymes in cold water detergent are designed to clean better in cold water. Doing two loads of laundry weekly in cold water instead of hot or warm water can save up to 500 pounds of carbon dioxide each year.

9. Buy less stuff! And buy used or recycled items whenever possible.

10. Bring your own reusable bag when you shop.

11. Try to avoid items with excess packaging.

12. If you’re in the market for a new computer, opt for a laptop instead of a desktop . Laptops require less energy to charge and operate than desktops.

13. If shopping for appliances, lighting, office equipment or electronics, look for Energy Star products , which are certified to be more energy efficient.

14. Support and buy from companies that are environmentally responsible and sustainable.

15. Do an energy audit of your home. This will show how you use or waste energy and help identify ways to be more energy efficient.

16. Change incandescent light bulbs (which waste 90 percent of their energy as heat) to light emitting diodes (LEDs). Though LEDs cost more, they use a quarter of the energy and last up to 25 times longer. They are also preferable to compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) bulbs, which emit 80 percent of their energy as heat and contain mercury.

17. Switch lights off when you leave the room and unplug your electronic devices when they are not in use.

18. Turn your water heater down to 120˚F. This can save about 550 pounds of CO2 a year.

19. Installing a low-flow showerhead to reduce hot water use can save 350 pounds of CO2. Taking shorter showers helps, too.

20. Lower your thermostat in winter and raise it in summer. Use less air conditioning in the summer; instead opt for fans, which require less electricity. And check out these other ways to beat the heat without air conditioning.

21. Sign up to get your electricity from clean energy through your local utility or a certified renewable energy provider. Green-e.org can help you find certified green energy providers.

Transportation

Because electricity increasingly comes from natural gas and renewable energy, transportation became the major source of U.S. CO2 emissions in 2017. An average car produces about five tons of CO2 each year (although this varies according to the type of car, its fuel efficiency and how it’s driven). Making changes in how you get around can significantly cut your carbon budget.

22. Drive less. Walk, take public transportation, carpool, rideshare or bike to your destination when possible. This not only reduces CO2 emissions, it also lessens traffic congestion and the idling of engines that accompanies it.

23. If you must drive, avoid unnecessary braking and acceleration. Some studies found that aggressive driving can result in 40 percent more fuel consumption than consistent, calm driving.

24. Take care of your car. Keeping your tires properly inflated can increase your fuel efficiency by three percent; and ensuring that your car is properly maintained can increase it by four percent. Remove any extra weight from the car.

25. When doing errands, try to combine them to reduce your driving.

26. Use traffic apps like Waze to help avoid getting stuck in traffic jams.

27. On longer trips, turn on the cruise control, which can save gas.

28. Use less air conditioning while you drive, even when the weather is hot.

29. If you’re shopping for a new car, consider purchasing a hybrid or electric vehicle . But do factor in the greenhouse gas emissions from the production of the car as well as its operation. Some electric vehicles are initially responsible for more emissions than internal combustion engine vehicles because of manufacturing impacts; but they make up for it after three years. This app rates cars based on their mileage, fuel type and emissions from both the production of the car and, if they are EVs, from generating the electricity to run them.

30. If you fly for work or pleasure, air travel is probably responsible for the largest part of your carbon footprint. Avoid flying if possible ; on shorter trips, driving may emit fewer greenhouse gases.

32. Fly nonstop since landings and takeoffs use more fuel and produce more emissions.

33. Go economy class. Business class is responsible for almost three times as many emissions as economy because in economy, the flight’s carbon emissions are shared among more passengers; first class can result in nine times more carbon emissions than economy.

34. If you can’t avoid flying, offset the carbon emissions of your travel.

Carbon offsets

A carbon offset is an amount of money you can pay for a project that reduces greenhouse gases somewhere else. If you offset one ton of carbon, the offset will help capture or destroy one ton of greenhouse gases that would otherwise have been released into the atmosphere. Offsets also promote sustainable development and increase the use of renewable energy.

This calculator estimates the carbon emissions of your flight and the amount of money needed to offset them. For example, flying economy roundtrip from New York to Los Angeles produces 1.5 tons of CO2; it costs $43 to offset this carbon.

You can purchase carbon offsets to compensate for any or all of your other carbon emissions as well.

The money you pay goes towards climate protection projects. Various organizations sponsor these projects. For example, Myclimate funds the purchase of energy efficient cookstoves in Rwanda, installing solar power in the Dominican Republic, and replacing old heating systems with energy efficient heat pumps in Switzerland. Cotap sustainably plants trees in India, Malawi, Mozambique, Uganda and Nicaragua to absorb CO2; you can sign up for monthly offsets here. Terrapass funds U.S. projects utilizing animal waste from farms, installing wind power, and capturing landfill gas to generate electricity. It also offers a monthly subscription for offsets.

Get politically active

35. Finally—and perhaps most importantly since the most effective solutions to climate change require governmental action— vote! Become politically active and let your representatives know you want them to take action to phase out fossil fuels use and decarbonize the country as fast as possible.

Learning About Complex Climate Risks

Ancient Plant, Insect Bits Confirm Greenland Melted in Recent Geologic Past

Planting Some Tree Species May Worsen, Not Improve, NYC Air, Says New Study

Columbia Climate School has once again been selected as university partner for Climate Week NYC, an annual convening of climate leaders to drive the transition, speed up progress and champion change. Join us for events and follow our coverage .

thank you for this information, I do my share but could improve. As the richest people on earth use more carbon their should pay carbon tax.

I do agree with you Kalpna, the richest people use an average of 1000x times more (the richer the more they use), since they have mansions (requires a lot more power), boats, private aeroplanes etc. Their Co2 emissions are through the roof, so carbon tax for the rich (especially ultra rich) would go a huge way to offsetting their extravagant lifestyles and the world in general and wouldn’t even impact them hardly at all.

Gee, I wonder how they got a million dollars, oh wait, because they work. And give others work. And TAX THEM? For what, they work hard and give others work and raising taxes is not ther answer, but lowering them is. But i guess its nice to have inflation and poverty, because of CO2. (My humble opinion.

Humble is down to Earth, not exploiting others for the sake of acquiring more to fill one’s voracious consumerism habits. Taxing a high carbon consumption lifestyle sounds responsible and humble to me and I think it spiritually solid to create a carbon tax on all that we do to help bring our awareness and consumerism disease to a more humble place.

Sorry, but that is nonsense. Read this: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax

Paying for your mistakes doesnt solve the problem. The biggest contributors pay so that people in poor countries end up changing their habits and end up planting more trees to compensate for the habits of the rich. This is not just nor climate justice. The perpetrators need to change their habits, their governments should govern their spending habits better.

Just because a person has wealth does not mean that they live extravagantly. That is an assumed generalization. Why don’t we say tax the mansion, not anyone “wealthy enough to own one.” Some people of means Do choose simple lifestyles. Why punish them simply because they have the financial resources to be extravagant?

Yeah, there should be rules for emitting Co2 (like your electric reading shouldn’t be above a reasonable number) or there’ll be fines. Taxes will be for the extra emitters, like the rich people. Taxes depend on their wealth and how much they emit.

Agreed. Taxes these days are getting harder to pay and by the time I’m dead, we will probably still have a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But then again, some things DO need carbon dioxide to live.

PGE CA is starting to make customers more aware of electric usage via monthly comparisons of your home’s usage versus more acceptable usage based on a number of specifications. Rates are also increasing based on when it’s more expensive to use during a 24 hour period. Our high rate time is 4-9PM

All these rich people don’t even care about this Earth. I mean Jeff Bezos went to space! Vladimir Putin has a yacht that’s roughly 2 million dollars. AND THEY DO NOTHING ABOUT IT. They could be helping their home, but children(or people who have been rich their whole lives) don’t understand anything about poverty. And they never will. We need to make a change for the better of humankind.

I totally agree. But also I think you mean $200 million. $2mill wouldn’t even pay for yearly upkeep for super yachts. I know as my friend works on one, and the maintenance costs are over $10mill per year 🙂 Peace.

I always follow your Blogs. They are very informative. I get information about various topics from them. I also want to share my blog with you. You will get information about the Arlo app from it. Thank you

On god, I think that a richer people should be paying carbon tax because they are using much more carbon than lower pay/lower class people

In your list of “ways to reduce your carbon footprint” I notice that you forgot to mention the single most important thing a family can do: have one fewer children. Do I sense fear of stating the unpopular?

Popular or not, you may be wrong because people are both the cause of and solution to all their problems. People are not wolves. With wolves and chickens, the more wolves: the fewer chickens, and the fewer wolves: the more chickens. With people, it is just the opposite: the more people you get more chickens not less. That extra kid may contribute to sustainablility.

I see your viewpoint. If one is living sustainably and encourages other people to do so, the benefits of that person living on the planet (through getting other people to reduce their environmental impact) likely exceeds the personal carbon footprint of that person.

Jim, I agree!

I agree Jim, fewer consumers, polluters, destroyers, less harm to the environment.

Or getting rid of family pet, 30% of CO’3 related to meat production

Family pet = meat production? Benefits of pets is tremendous – safety, assist handicapped, therapy animals, provide comfort and companionship, reduce blood pressure and anxiety, etc .If you are referring to the fact that they eat pet foods, most pet foods are made from meat scraps (parts not sold for human consumption) and include vegetables. Also, changes in feed for farm animals has reduced gas emissions.

I don’t think that a family pet can be produced to meat but you have the right idea

ANIMAL HATER

Lol you all are all for less babies but not for less pets. Lord the internet is funny.

How about we start raising our children to be more earth friendly?? How about we expect companies ( including pet food) to produce in ways that are good for the environment? Why do we need to get rid of kids or pets?

I guess this is an old thread, but birds for instance eat the same things as their vegan owners. We had broccoli spears, edamame beans, a few pasta rotinis, a few spoons of corn kernals, and the parrot had some organic Harrison feed pellets with vitamins, plus a splay of fresh pea pods. I had mung dahl on quinoa later on with kale, he had another round of pellets for dinner, apple juice and pea pods. Parrots need adopting, if anyone wants a good pet, check your computer for parrot rescue or exchange sites. Lots of loving companions that need homes….and they like what we like to eat….bananas and oranges, but mostly local stuff, zuccini and corn this time of year and into fall.

They fear underpopulation spesifically, which is already a danger in places like China & Europe, where the elderly outnumber anyone under 12

Thanks for the tips. However, #32 which advises non-stop flying is unlikely to be true most of the time as non- stop flights tend to burn large quantities of fuel carrying the additional fuel mass. In general a 50/50 split is the most fuel efficient way to take a long flight.

Charge by weight for flying (person + luggage)

Maybe we should consider adding one more idea. #36. Save carbon rich material from turning into CO2. Reduce your carbon footprint by keeping dead plant around longer. A leaf falls on the ground and is decomposed this year. I dry a leaf and put it a book and can be there in 100 years.

This is what the Japanese government does: if you build a house of wood, you get a huge cheque of about $8,000USD from the government for storing CO2 in your house.

Your point about eating less meat, er maybe even going full vegan is incorrect. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter one thing what you eat. Meat might be responsible for more greenhouse gasses, but for vegitarians they cut down millions of acres of forest eacht year to provide the room to grow their crops (Just look at the soy farms in Brazil and the palm olive fields in Malaysia). Deforestation causes far more greenhouse gas emission than cattle, and it also takes away the only means by which CO2 can be removed from the air. This problem is caused by overpopulation, not meat.

We can both agree that deforestation is a big problem for climate change. However, it takes 12 pounds of grain to make 1 pound of beef. It is therefore much more efficient, and requires less land and deforestation, if we just eat the grain itself. It’s like cutting out the middleman, only the middleman = cows 🙂

Other interesting stats here: http://holdthebeef.org/#new-page-4

cows can and do eat grass. Grass is a huge CO2 sink. Buy grass fed. Broccoli will use more land and give you less nutrition. Hooved animals walked this earth in large numbers before humans concentrated them in fences and farms.

I though to make meat all you do is kill and animals, cook it, then eat it…?

Actually 70 to 75% of the world’s soy is used for animal feed for chickens, pigs, cows and farmed fish. After beef, which is #1, soy is the second largest cause of deforestation.

I am a vegan and have solved the problem of soy and palm oil. I don’t use either, and am a healthy vegan.

Solution could be to stop over eating, veg or meat and stop wasting food. I think food industry should also be penalized. One of the culprits in my opinion are supermarkets. They buy cheap and more and waste a lot as their pricing takes wasting into account. Local govt should monitor and penalize if they waste food items and simultaneously reduce the expiry date of the food items, this will deter industry to mass produce anything edible. These are scalable and I believe would be very effective.

Packaging is also a problem. A 750 ml bottle for wine weighs 750 gm – very inefficient. Lots of energy wasted even if recycled. Ban wine, beer, drinks in glass bottles?

I’m an Ag student and I’m actually doing some research for an Ag Issues project for FFA and I noticed that you might be thinking of this the wrong way. I grew up on a commercial cattle ranch and I obviously agree with you that cutting out meat isn’t the way to go. Growing up in a rural farmland area and being a member of FFA I have always thought of the crop industry and the cattle/meat industry as a united industry: the Agricultural Industry. But I of course realize that not everyone has this experience. I don’t know if this is going to make much sense but what I’m trying to say is that this issue is not CROPS vs. MEAT. We as the agricultural industry raise cattle for dairy and meat products AND we grow the crops necessary for people who choose to be either vegan or vegetarian. It’s not really two separate industries that are competing for your attention, it’s only one. I cannot say anything about other places like Brazil and Malaysia but here in the United States, the agricultural industry is CONSTANTLY working to improve our methods of farming and ranching to emit less greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. I would also like to say that I am slightly disappointed in an institution like Columbia University for blaming climate change on cattle burping methane into the atmosphere. Cows do burp methane into the atmosphere, this is true, but what people always seem to forget is that this is a part of the natural carbon cycle. Key word there: NATURAL. These cattle have been doing this since the beginning of ranching methods and before that, the hundreds of thousands of Bison that used to roam the great plains did the same thing. We cannot blame cattle for doing what they are designed to do. Anyway, sorry for rambling on, hope that this possibly helped someone.

Acarnes, this is really poor logic. Cows do “naturally” produce GHGs. But we have 94.8 million cows in the US. That’s almost 1 cow for every 3 people. There is nothing natural about industrial agriculture, and quantity of the GHG source is more important than whether or not it existed in some capacity pre-industrialization. As someone mentioned above, it takes 12 lbs of grain to make 1 lb of beef (not to mention water!). If more people move to substitute more plants for beef, you can feed the same amount of people with less cows, as that 12 lbs of grain can feed more people than 1 lb of beef. This clearly reduces carbon footprint, as it reduces overall consumption and agricultural production per person. This may not be in your best interests as someone going into the Ag industry, which I’m sure informs some of your opinion there, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

hello, the supermarkets wouldnt know what hit them if we all ate less meat, that would reduce in food wastage too, but im sure they would adjust!

Can’t believe anyone would give a thumbs down for facts.

Only 6% of the crop grown on land cleared in Brazil for soya production, goes to feed people. 94% goes to feed animals and chickens to provide food for meat eaters. It takes much less land to feed people directly with plant food than it would to grow the food to feed the animals with which to feed those people. If we all are a vegetarian or vegan diet we would need less land and more could be left as wild forest to absorb and store carbon.

Hey Patric, I just think that your forgetting that we use a large areas to grow crops to then feed live stock, much more then it would take to feed the human population. Also cows produce methane.

they cut down those forests to make room for livestock it takes a lot less room for a vegetarian or vegan diet than one that has meat I am not vegan or vegetarian but you have a thing backwards.

Hi Patric, I definitely see what you are saying with regards to Soy production. Indonesian and Malaysian Rainforest are cut down for both palm oil and soy production. This accounts for around 10% of the problem each, which is still a significant proportion. Beef production, however, is 85% of the problem and a lot of Soy Beans are grown as cattle feed as grazing ground is not possible without the rainforest. This means that beef and dairy production are the huge contributors to climate change as they also include a vast proportion of the requirement for soy. If veganism isn’t for you, you’d be better to switch to white meats such as chicken as they take up less physical space and require less logging or land degradation than beef production (but still have greater carbon and ethical implications than a vegan diet).

Lancet studies in England put out a study. We cannot save the planet unless we stop herding beef. Cows grow for 2 years minimum before industrial harvesting=a lot of methane farts and belches. Ruminants. The study showed less beef and less lamb on the plates of the world to save the planet. Also think of all the heart surgery from grease in our blood vessels these days. Less beef, then less colon cancer too, better health. The surgeon general in the US has stated it, but cattlemen won’t let the warning be printed on the meat packages. Eating red meat has been proved to be hazardous to human health. Lobbyists deny the truth. Big meat is full of toxic material in the animal fat, and big fish too. The meat eaters make vegans pay for their medical bills, which are enormous. Japanese eat dolphin which is loaded with mercury.

It took 150 million years to create the rain forest in Brazil. They should grow river turtles, not cattle, if they want meat in the Amazon. Cows weren’t meant to live on rich fertile forest land, trees live there and have rights to the soil they created via vegetation. It takes 1,000 gallons of water to make a pound of beef meat. Meat eater’s clothing is so hard to clean that maids must make hot, hot water and use lots of toxic soaps.

Why not just live clean? Lots of good nuts and apples to harvest. Tropical people are happy with bananas and peas, pineapple and all that juicy variety. They hardly eat the meat they grow on the fields they have created from destroyed forests. Rice is almost the divine of foods, with ginger and turmeric. Some beans and squash keep the soil good, and healthy soil grows all kinds of fruits and trees. We need good soil.

Cows eat too much before slaughter. If you must eat animal, better to eat rabbits and turtles, frog’s legs and snails. Use some locust “meat” to make your burgers. People can eat sea urchins that overpopulate the shores. People could fish them with a knife. Pig farms will have to close too. All that pollution and putrid decayed matter pigs produce will at last be gone. Farms were once sacred to nature. Soil was fertile, and so plentiful was food. The world was an Eden which will return. Nature has always favored that which really sustains her. There is enough vegan matter to feed all the billions of folks alive today, but it isn’t sourced out well. Too many meat eaters eat too much of it. Almost all of it … via the large industrial cow farms.

Patric, I agree with you at a certain point: Brazil, has and keeps the world largest green are. Only 8% of its territory is used to produce meat, beans, coconuts farms and so on. It is the only country in the world that does somethong to keep his green area. I know about it, I lived 20 years in South America and I know how tough they are regarding keeping their green amazon. I used to work for the government, I used to work with territory planning and development of sustainable activities such as economics based o local vocation and load capacity of the environment.

There is a massive misconception about soy. (77%) Most of the soy grown is used worldwide is used exclusively as animal feed and only 7% is used for direct human consumption. Soy is a great source of nutrients to the human diet. https://ourworldindata.org/soy#:~:text=More%20than%20three-quarters%20%2877%25%29%20of%20global%20soy%20is,as%20tofu%2C%20soy%20milk%2C%20edamame%20beans%2C%20and%20tempeh .

77% of farmland goes to meat. 80% of deforestation goes to livestock. 97% of US soy (which you mentioned) goes to livestock.) The problem is meat.

I’m surprised no one has mentioned that there are alternatives to traditional livestock, and fish for meat/protein. What about bug protein, i.e. cricket ranches and/or the many, many plants that are high in protien that do not use anywhere near the resources of traditional lifestock and crops. There are so many alternatives to growing corn, wheat, and soybeans and raising cattle, chickens, etc. The ag economy is profitable, and the lobbyist are plentiful and powerful. Same as the oil industry. If you want to be a future farmer in America, then thinking way outside of the traditional scope of what is considered farming and ranching must be considered. Innovation in that sector is not all that innovative. Crops and livestock still require enormous amounts of resources, that is inescapable. Buying and growing locally produced food sources can save money and reduce carbon emissions and connects us in our communities. Americans have gotten far from that concept; we all expect that we should be able to go down to the local Wal-Mart and get everything we need. Wal-Mart put all the mom and pop entrepreneurs out of business, and the tax incentives and crop insurance programs developed in the early 1980’s that incentivized growth put a lot of small farming operations out of business, like my own family and many, many farming operations. This concept that we must always be in a financial growth pattern is exactly what is going to cause our own demise.

Hello there! Terrific points about energy conservation and carbon footprint reductions. Props to the author(s)! I happen to run a blog devoted to renewables and energy efficiency and thought one of my articles about energy audit tools might be useful to your readers if you incorporate it in this article.

Here it goes: https://www.everysolarthing.com/blog/energy-audit-tools/ There are no ads or affiliate links whatsoever.

Either way, keep up the important work of spreading a word about environmentally friendly lifestyle.

How can I reduce my carbon footprint and still be warm

Lots of options. Get a programmable thermostat and set it so that you are comfortable but not crazy hot or cold; seal air leaks in your home; add insulation; don’t leave doors & windows open when running furnace or AC; reduce the temperature setting of your hot water heater to 120 F; choose to live close to where you work and shop so that you can walk, ride a bike, or take public transit; show up at public meetings to advocate for mixed use zoning, higher density zoning, public transit; choose renewable energy if your state/city allows you to choose your electricity supplier; eat a bit less beef, switching to a bit more poultry and/or grains, beans, veggies; buy less stuff – take care of what you own, make it last a long time, reuse, repair, use reusable water bottles and coffee cups, don’t waste $ on flashy objects that end up not really bringing you joy. No doubt you and others can think of even more options.

The point is, we don’t need to live hard, cruel lives of depravation to reduce our carbon footprints. A lot can be accomplished through thoughtful choices.

A good old fashioned sweater.

I know people who keep the heat at 80 and wear a T-shirt around inside when its 20 degrees out. Its a reasonable sacrifice to make to live at a comfortable 65, and if you can’t handle that, Goodwill has sweaters for cheap.

buy thrifted clothing !!!

Can you say more about how using reusable bags reduces the carbon footprint please? we are trying to pass a bag ban in my town and need all the solid scientific data we can get.

Going politically active doesn’t necessarily lower your carbon footprint, it can force the entire country’s carbon footprint down, and as a result, yours. For example, if you voted for a law to shut down a coal powered power plant and replace it with a solar or wind farm, you would be cutting down on an entire organization’s carbon footprint, and not just your own.

A plastic bag is equal to about 1 drop of crude oil. Driving to the supermarket consumes at least 10 drops of oil/petrol per kilometre. Bags are litter but driving is much worse for carbon footprint.

not a scientist or anything, but in order to produce single-use plastic bags they have to use crude oil and this produces a lot of greenhouse gases/carbon emissions, and they only get used once! with reusable cloth bags (sometimes people have reusable bags made of other materials), it has a different amount of emissions produced (generally less, if it’s cloth and not plastic) and then this also pays off because you aren’t producing more emissions each time you go shopping because you can reuse the bag. But someone mentioned that cars use more crude oil than a plastic bag, which is true, so walk/ride to the grocery store, or make sure you are running other errands at the same time in order to not waste fuel or anything 🙂 (and buy an EV if u can!)

Thanks a lot for the tips.. by the way, you mention that better to wash in cold water.. what will happen if we wash with warm water?is there any risk?

I don’t think there’s any risk except that it takes energy to heat water, therefore higher carbon footprint

This is very informative always trying to cut down on my impact especially since we never know when we’re gonna need filtered air don’t want it to be in my life time but at this rate it might

We all need to work harder to save our environment

Finally an article that actually lays out what each of us can do. The problem seems so overwhelming.

Yes it may do but all helps even just small things. Just thinking about what we can do will lead to positive changes be it small to start with but may be a big thing in the near future.

I think all of these re great ideas, but to add one, i would like to say that we try to make clothes out of the scraps of cloth that are going to the landfill.

And repair your clothes

Recent gift was a rug made in Scotland from recycled wool.

hello, i am in 4rth grade, and my idea is that we try to get things that will fill the landfill, so when we don’t buy them, they will go to the landfill. when we buy fancy cloths, that is wasting water, which is not good, but old cloths are used, so you are not using new ones!

I see your point but another point of view is, if you start buying the product constantly, the company will produce more, and the more product you make the more Co2 is produced through the factories.

people need to keep protesting in Brazil so the president of Brazil can stop doing bad stuff to the earth

hi i am in 4th grade and i think you should turn of all the light when you leave the house,use self chargers to charge your phones,and have solar panels insted of wasting electricety.

ride a bike or walk if youare going somewere.also if it is a mile drive if ir is less then walk or drive

hi i’m Becca and i’m in 4th grade my idea is i think we need to stop cutting down trees because it uses up a lot of units

we have to try to help the planet

I am wondering about point 12. Do you have any more information about why a laptop should be more efficient than a desktop. I thought its just the same parts put together in a different housing.

Desktops are plugged in so can use whatever power they like and function well. Laptops need to be portable so the longer the battery life, the better. Therefore, a laptop needs to be more eco to increase their sales as people buy laptops with longer battery life.

But you also need to put in mind the performance. If loading a video on a laptop takes 2 hours to upload on a desktop it might take only 45min. Desktops have an amazing performance. Also on a desktop, you can put it in performance mode where the ratios are equwielent.

Laptop components are designed and fabricated to use less power.

Just came upon this site in search of ways I can reduce my own carbon footprint and found some good ideas that I will try to implement. I have found that corporations, in their search of profits, tend to move their manufacturing off shore to jurisdictions where there are little or no environmental rules and then import these products back to western countries. I believe that we need a Carbon Footprint Tax on goods imported from polluting countries and that this tax be dedicated solely to reducing national carbon footprints eg. Converting coal fired generating plants to gas etc. Not sure how feasible this concept would be but it would be a way to entice polluting countries to clean up their own environmental practices. As we are having our federal elections this month in Canada I will be visiting each candidate in my riding to suggest this idea.

what does getting politically active have to do with my carbon footprint ?

I do my part and after reading this article, I feel my husband and I definitely exceed these points. We hardly go out, so therefore we are not driving, we shower twice a week, we wash clothes on cold, (we don’t have that many loads because we don’t go out so therefore it’s basically pjs and underwear we are washing, we haven’t travelled in 18 years, we hardly eat meat, (we don’t eat much as it is), we do not buy clothing and use the clothes we have whether they are worn out or not, where we live, (Hudson Valley, no one cares what you look like), so therefore we are not getting rid of 80 tons of clothes a year. We sit in the dark at night, we hardly watch tv, we don’t use our computers. I’m 53 and he’s 69. We basically stopped living. However, what are your thoughts on pellet stoves to heat the home? We live in a trailer.

Thank you so much i needed this ◕‿◕

This is a helpful article and thank you. I am curious, at the institutional level, what are top tier schools like Columbia doing to demonstrate their commitment to going green? Limiting staff air travel, requiring alternating in office and WFH staff schedules, etc. These institutions are leading the charge in thought, which is incredibly important, but are they also implementing these ideas more broadly?

Hi Kella, thanks for your interest! You can read an overview of Columbia’s sustainability initiatives here: https://sustainable.columbia.edu/

Good Information on carbon footprints reduction. Actually everybody is nowadays aware that how to reduce the carbon footprints, but the question is? are we really honest in following the same? Lets commit that we will do atleast our part and if everyone will do his part… than the mother earth will be green and healthy!

I disagree with the suggestion to buy a laptop over a desktop, a laptop has a much lower life cycle and is not easily upgradable. If you got a desktop instead, while you might use more electricity, it is better due to avoiding more computer parts being thrown away. Desktops being upgradeable means you can swap parts that need to be upgraded instead of buying a whole new system everytime it becomes unusable. For example a monitor does not become unusable at the same rate as a CPU, but by getting a laptop you end up getting a new monitor everytime you get a new system despite the older one being perfectly fine.

Thanks for sharing! Avoiding flying is hard. But the pandemic has had a huge impact on air travel and we are seeing more and more of our clients (honeymooners) take road trips. Hopefully this has helped reduce their carbon footprint.

If u become vegan u will have a lower carbon footprint

Agree…. but we also have to stop burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and cement production. If we can do this, only then carbon footprint can be reduced.

No, I love my burgers, hot dogs, chicken, and pork.

Stop shopping at Trader Joe’s. Most of their packaged goods are made in Turkey, China, Vietnam, Bulgaria, etc. Orange carrot juice made in Turkey in glass bottles shipped to your local TJ’s and sold for 2.99 is a carbon disaster. TJ’s is mostly frozen dinners, highly packaged and processed foods, many with artificial flavoring and colors, high sodium and sugar and non-local produce wrapped individually in plastic and stryofoam. Walmart has better governance and transparency. Avoid Trader Joe’s at all costs.

thank you for helpimg me on a assinment i am going to make the world a better place

growing your own food and owning a few chickens is a really good way to help I think. Usually eggs from commercial farms are mass produced and are less quality.

Don’t buy toys that require batteries.

but what if I want to

Don’t go to or support: car races, hot air balloons, boats with motors, joy flights, cruise ships, jet skis etc.

Live healthfully. Healthy living & preventative care saves lots of resources.

This means cultivating a healthy body. Keeping a healthy mind

The healthcare system is full of high consumption (huge industry sector, single use everything, high energy resources.). I’m grateful resources exist but it’s best to consciously live the best you can in hopes of needing it as little as possible.

Animal feed is now being used that produces less methane in cows.

Btw, if you get breast cancer, the first thing you are told is do NOT eat soy. Many products include soy; oils labeled ‘vegetable oil’ are often 100% soy.

Also, not kidding: we tried plant based ‘fake meat’ and we had indigestion and gas for days.

Let’s go with Gore’s plan – less people. Not sure how he plans to achieve that.

Al gore has done really well with this ‘carbon offset’ business. He went from being worth $2 mil to hundreds of millions. His house in Nashville uses huge amounts of energy.

oh shoot guys this is a major problem. we have to….. CHANGE it’s so nice people care about this subject, soon all we’re gonna here about is this.

i think everyone should start to be more observant and have more respect for the things and people that put this world into shape. I also think pollution is one of the main problems and some people can fix that but chose not too and it has damaged our world.

no one Ever Looks at a Shark and Tells Him That he is Destroying the Environment By Eating Other Fish. So Why do People Look At Meat Eaters and Say we Destroy The Environment?

If there were 8 billion sharks there would be no fish.

I am beginning my journey to reduce my carbon footpring

I agree with all these things, but the 8.7 tons per capita is misleading for china as china has ~1.3 billion people inside their nation while America only has ~350 million, If you don’t know per capita is basically per person. So while china may have a lower per capita they have 3 times more people. if china had the same amount of people as the united states it would equate to ~32.3 tons per capita, giving them a much higher per capita than the U.S.

To say myself, I think this will help our planet during COVID and to increase the population of endangered creatures.

Great information. Thanks.

I’m in the midst of reading the article right now. SO GLAD TO HAVE FOUND U!!! I only recently heard on NPR that residential homes emit more carbon than I ever knew about and am madly trying to learn of all of the ways that we can contribute for the good of the climate. Am very excited to hear this news. Thank you all so much for being there and for the work that you all are doing!

Love this article!

#savetheworld

Yes save the world please our world needs help! *^*

Every aspect of everyone’s life needs to change.

Everyone must go vegan.

You can’t say everyone “Must” go vegan. It is healthy to eat meat and other stuff, not everyone can be vegan it can make people sick if they were raised eating meat. Same with vegetables if someone who was raised eating vegetables then meat may make them sick. All though neither meat or vegetable community is wrong. Though I find it rude for you to say “Everyone must go vegan” I do support you for being vegan 🙂

I think some of yall are all missing the point of the article.

? What do all our congressmen and Senators drive??

Simple and applicable suggestions – Fantastic article, thank you

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carbon footprint , amount of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions associated with all the activities of a person or other entity (e.g., building, corporation, country, etc.). It includes direct emissions, such as those that result from fossil-fuel combustion in manufacturing , heating, and transportation , as well as emissions required to produce the electricity associated with goods and services consumed. In addition, the carbon footprint concept also often includes the emissions of other greenhouse gases , such as methane , nitrous oxide , or chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).

The carbon footprint concept is related to and grew out of the older idea of ecological footprint , a concept invented in the early 1990s by Canadian ecologist William Rees and Swiss-born regional planner Mathis Wackernagel at the University of British Columbia . An ecological footprint is the total area of land required to sustain an activity or population . It includes environmental impacts, such as water use and the amount of land used for food production. In contrast, a carbon footprint is usually expressed as a measure of weight, as in tons of CO 2 or CO 2 equivalent per year.

Carbon footprints are different from a country’s reported per capita emissions (for example, those reported under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). Rather than the greenhouse gas emissions associated with production, carbon footprints focus on the greenhouse gas emissions associated with consumption . They include the emissions associated with goods that are imported into a country but are produced elsewhere and generally take into account emissions associated with international transport and shipping, which is not accounted for in standard national inventories. As a result, a country’s carbon footprint can increase even as carbon emissions within its borders decrease.

The per capita carbon footprint is highest in the United States . According to the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center and the United Nations Development Programme , in 2004 the average resident of the United States had a per capita carbon footprint of 20.6 metric tons (22.7 short tons) of CO 2 equivalent, some five to seven times the global average. Averages vary greatly around the world, with higher footprints generally found in residents of developed countries. For example, that same year France had a per capita carbon footprint of 6.0 metric tons (6.6 short tons), whereas Brazil and Tanzania had carbon footprints of 1.8 metric tons (about 2 short tons) and 0.1 metric ton (0.1 short ton) of CO 2 equivalent, respectively.

In developed countries , transportation and household energy use make up the largest component of an individual’s carbon footprint. For example, approximately 40 percent of total emissions in the United States during the first decade of the 21st century were from those sources. Such emissions are included as part of an individual’s “primary” carbon footprint, representing the emissions over which an individual has direct control. The remainder of an individual’s carbon footprint is called the “secondary” carbon footprint, representing carbon emissions associated with the consumption of goods and services. The secondary footprint includes carbon emissions emitted by food production. It can be used to account for diets that contain higher proportions of meat, which requires a greater amount of energy and nutrients to produce than vegetables and grains, and foods that have been transported long distances. The manufacturing and transportation of consumer goods are additional contributors to the secondary carbon footprint. For example, the carbon footprint of a bottle of water includes the CO 2 or CO 2 equivalent emitted during the manufacture of the bottle itself plus the amount emitted during the transportation of the bottle to the consumer.

A variety of different tools exist for calculating the carbon footprints for individuals, businesses, and other organizations. Commonly used methodologies for calculating organizational carbon footprints include the Greenhouse Gas Protocol , from the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, and ISO 14064, a standard developed by the International Organization for Standardization dealing specifically with greenhouse gas emissions. Several organizations, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency , the Nature Conservancy , and British Petroleum , created carbon calculators on the Internet for individuals. Such calculators allow people to compare their own estimated carbon footprints with the national and world averages.

Individuals and corporations can take a number of steps to reduce their carbon footprints and thus contribute to global climate mitigation. They can purchase carbon offsets (broadly stated, an investment in a carbon-reducing activity or technology) to compensate for part or all of their carbon footprint. If they purchase enough to offset their carbon footprint, they become effectively carbon neutral.

Carbon footprints can be reduced through improving energy efficiency and changing lifestyles and purchasing habits. Switching one’s energy and transportation use can have an impact on primary carbon footprints. For example, using public transportation , such as buses and trains, reduces an individual’s carbon footprint when compared with driving. Individuals and corporations can reduce their respective carbon footprints by installing energy-efficient lighting, adding insulation in buildings, or using renewable energy sources to generate the electricity they require. For example, electricity generation from wind power produces no direct carbon emissions. Additional lifestyle choices that can lower an individual’s secondary carbon footprint include reducing one’s consumption of meat and switching one’s purchasing habits to products that require fewer carbon emissions to produce and transport.

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Carbon footprint refers to the total amount of greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, that is generated by human activities such as transportation, electricity consumption, and industrial processes. It is a measure of the impact that human actions have on the environment and climate change. Reducing carbon footprint is essential to mitigate the damaging effects of global warming and to achieve sustainability for future generations.

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Lower your footprint —

How to reduce our carbon footprint, like right now—here’s what you can do after you read this..

K. E. D. Coan - Nov 9, 2021 12:30 pm UTC

After the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) last month, it's easy to feel demoralized. With everything else in the news, it's also easy to focus on threats that are arguably more imminent, like the delta coronavirus variant. But the threat from the climate crisis is increasingly part of our everyday lives—and it's going to get worse.

As a result of insufficient action over the past several decades, the next 30 years will bring more extreme weather and a temperature rise of at least 1.5° C, no matter what we do. But—and there is a very important but —collective action now will decide whether the future is even worse than the IPCC's already grim forecast.

"The question now isn't whether we're going to avoid this," says Professor Michael E. Mann , a leading climatologist at Pennsylvania State University who has been a proponent of recognizing and combating climate change. "It's how bad are we willing to let it get."

Mann has a new book that describes how climate deniers have shifted tactics in recent years, going from saying there's nothing to worry about to suggesting that it's too late for our actions to have any impact. There has also been a concerted effort to shift attention to individuals rather than holding the biggest polluters accountable. But if we're to have any chance of a better climate future, a combination of both individual and collective action is the only way forward.

"We should all do what we can do to minimize our own environmental impact, which in many cases are things that make us healthier and save us money, too," says Mann. "But the most important thing we can do is use our voices in every way possible—to make climate part of your daily conversation so that there is this larger public awareness and pressure on our policymakers to do the right thing."

So, if you're not yet prepared to surrender to an increasingly dire climate future, here are a few reminders that there's a lot you can do—starting with things you can do as soon as possible. There is, of course, no one-size-fits-all approach, and everyone has to work within their own circumstances—but every contribution is a step in the right direction.

Change the conversation

Unprecedented wildfires, floods , cold weather , and " virtually impossible " heat domes have become regular events. The effects are no longer looming in the future—we're mired in the consequences of the climate crisis right now. Extreme weather and disasters, which are clearly attributable to human activity, are the new normal, and they will be for decades to come (if not longer).

These events aren't the most uplifting topics of conversation, but working toward solutions can be. The old saying, "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it," has been true in the past, but we now know that people really can do something about it. So, as a first step, if you find any worthwhile information, share it—with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, social networks, and anyone else. Asking questions, sharing ideas, and joining conversations are all ways to motivate yourself and others .

If there are any young people in your life, there are resources to help them learn about the climate as well—an understanding that can't be taken for granted in all school systems.

"There is an effort by polluters and right-wing politicians who work on their behalf to promote climate change denialism in our schools—in a way that mirrors the efforts by creationists to water down the teaching of evolution," says Mann, who is also a member of the board for the National Center for Science Education . "This is potentially the greatest threat that our children and grandchildren face, and misinforming them intentionally about that is deeply immoral—so I would encourage people to contribute to any of the organizations making sure that kids are getting taught the actual science of climate change."

Make your next meal climate-friendly

Even if the world cuts fossil fuel use tomorrow, food production alone is estimated to produce enough emissions to further increase global temperatures by 1.5° C to 2° C. Beef and dairy are the biggest contributors—particularly in the US. Cutting just these two foods may have more impact than any other single action an individual can take. However, there's no need to become vegan overnight or even ever; any reduced consumption will help.

Beyond avoiding cattle, there are resources to help determine which meats have the lowest impact (spoiler: poultry is best). Pescatarians aren't in the clear—farmed and wild crustaceans can have a larger carbon footprint than pork. Aquaculture certifications are still evolving, but other resources are available for fine-tuning the sustainability of seafood platters. In general, mollusks and smaller fish like sardines are among the best options.

If you need motivation beyond saving the world, increasing evidence shows that plant-based diets are healthier . (Plus, just look how adorable cows can be.)

In addition to what we do eat, keeping an eye on what we don't eat can also help the environment. As of the last USDA estimate in 2014, over 30 percent of the US food supply gets tossed. The global figure is also approximately 30 percent—totaling around 1.3 billion metric tons of otherwise edible food. With malnutrition still a world health crisis, systemic changes to the food industry are critical to addressing this problem. But, in the meantime, both the FDA and the EPA have tips on how to cut food waste on an individual level.

Choose climate-conscious fashion

Moving on to what you wear... according to the World Economic Forum, the fashion industry is responsible for 10 percent of humanity's carbon emissions. What's even more egregious is that an estimated 85 percent of newly produced clothing ends up in landfills or gets left in toxic, explosive heaps. Organizations like the Ellen MacArthur Foundation are working toward systemic changes to the fashion industry to promote longer-lasting and more easily recycled clothing, as well as using nontoxic manufacturing processes. But as a more immediate solution, buying fewer, better-quality clothes (or even used fashion) and buying sustainable brands can curb the fashion industry's carbon footprint.

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The practical ways to reduce your carbon footprint (that actually work)

The history of the ‘carbon footprint’ is a complicated one. The term itself refers to the total carbon emissions of all your everyday activities – your drive to work, the food you eat, how you heat your home. But did you know who first popularised it? Over two decades ago, the oil giant BP, one of the highest-emitting companies in the world, promoted the snappy phrase as part of a marketing campaign, with the underlying goal of pushing the responsibility for reducing emissions onto the individual. Over time, the idiom has been co-opted by gigantic corporations in order to divert attention from their similarly gigantic greenhouse gas emissions, and shift the blame onto the everyman.

The average person in the UK has a carbon footprint of about 5.5 tonnes per year – global greenhouse gas emissions are about 50 billion tonnes . So efforts to lower your personal impact on climate change will likely be a drop in the ocean. In the grand scheme of things, your personal carbon footprint, no matter how small it is, will not have a massively tangible impact on the climate crisis – even if you follow all these actions to a tee, your overall impact will still be minimal. Preventing the worst of the climate crisis will require systemic, policy-based change, and many of the biggest sources of emissions come from processes over which the average individual has zero control. You’ve probably heard the statistic that 70 per cent of all emissions since 1988 were released by just 100 companies.

But that doesn't mean you should throw in the towel and only travel by private jet. Aligning your everyday actions with your values can have a ripple effect: it can encourage others around you to take action too, which can actually lead to real change. One survey found that 75 per cent of respondents had changed their attitudes to flying and climate change as a result of people they knew who were flying less due to climate concerns, and half said they were flying less.

And go beyond personal actions like forgoing plastic straws – direct your energy towards fighting for systemic change. Take part in climate activism: join protests, sign petitions, talk to your friends and family. Use your vote: one study found that voting Conservative in the last Canadian election effectively tripled your carbon footprint overnight. Contact your local political representative and tell them why you think action on climate change is important ( here’s a template for the UK. ) Donate to effective climate charities . Divest from fossil fuels: move your assets to a bank that doesn’t support the fossil fuel industry .

And remember: this burden is not shared equally. For example, the average carbon footprint of someone in the US is around 16 tonnes a year – someone in Rwanda emits just under one tonne. The richest ten per cent of the world – those who earn over $38,000 (£27,545) – is responsible for half of global emissions between 1990 and 2015. All of these actions will have the most impact if taken by the wealthy, who are overwhelmingly the highest emitters.

Flying accounts for a huge proportion of an individual’s annual carbon footprint – particularly if you’re a habitual or long-haul flyer. A long-haul return flight between London and New York emits 1.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide – over three times the amount that someone living in Ghana will emit in a year. And while many airlines offer the option to “offset” your flight, the consensus is that offsets, which outsource the emissions reduction to other sectors, don’t actually have much of an impact: one analysis found that less than five per cent of offsets in 2020 removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

How much carbon would taking a train instead of flying really save? EcoPassenger provides a comprehensive guide to different modes of transport and their various carbon impacts. For example, from London to Budapest, the train journey – albeit taking a gruelling 21 hours – produces the least carbon emissions, at 45.8kg of CO2. This is exceeded by both car (227.3kg) and plane (224.7kg). Train expert The Man in Seat 61 , has calculated the carbon reductions involved in taking trains over planes for popular routes across the world. He found that travelling from London to Paris by Eurostar instead of plane results in slicing carbon emissions by 91 per cent.

However, while train over bus may generally hold true, it can depend on where you’re travelling. The National Geographic tracked how much carbon would be expelled by different methods of transport between Toronto and New York and the results are somewhat surprising. An hour and a half plane journey is the least energy efficient mode, but the train forfeited first place to the humble Greyhound bus. This is because the Amtrak train releases a high volume of diesel fuel emissions. In Europe and other places, trains are more environmentally friendly. For example, the Eurostar is one of the cleanest ways to travel, producing just 0.006kg CO2 per km per passenger.

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Boats are another mode of transport where counterintuitive logic can seep in. While boats might generally be considered fairly environmentally friendly, this isn’t always the case. In fact, a study found that a certain type of boat, the Large RoPax passenger ferry, was actually more polluting than taking a first class flight (0.39kg of CO2 per Km per person compared to 0.32kg CO2 per km per person). However, a different type of foot passenger ferry releases much lower levels, about 0.18kg of CO2 per km, and is ranked as one of the cleanest ways to travel

If you do have to fly, make sure to pick economy class, because the carbon burden is shared among more passengers. Flying first class is associated with carbon emissions nine times more than economy.

Go plant-based

The food you eat has a massive impact on the climate. Food production is responsible for a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, and meat and dairy are the two biggest culprits, accounting for around 14.5 per cent . The Lancet medical journal published a study that called on Europeans to reduce their red meat consumption by 77 per cent in order to avoid “catastrophic damage to the planet”.

What would happen if the whole world went vegan? A study from Oxford University estimated there would be a 49 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from food production if we all followed our vegan friend’s advice. On an individual basis, research showed that a vegan’s diet is the most carbon light ( creating 6.4 pounds CO2 per day ), while a diet heavy in meat is also the heaviest in carbon (15.8 pounds CO2-eq per day). While different estimates vary, it’s generally agreed that you could cut your carbon footprint by around 20 per cent by switching to a vegan diet.

You may have heard from the Well, Actually faction of society that vegetables are more carbon intensive to produce than certain types of meat. However, this wisdom rests on a per calorie or weight calculation, and the inane assumption that someone might binge on a ribeye steak’s worth of lettuce. In fact, a 2018 study by Oxford University that looked at 40 common foods and their greenhouse gas emissions couldn’t find any animal products that were less environmentally taxing than their plant-based alternatives.

But if you can’t face going fully meat free, the best meats to cut down on are from sheep and cows, the animals that produce the most atmosphere frying methane. Research from Oxford University found that if every family in the UK swapped out a red meat-based meal for a plant-based alternative just once a week, the environmental impact would be equivalent to taking 16 million cars off the road.

Eating local – meaning food grown near you that hasn’t travelled millions of miles – actually doesn’t massively impact your carbon footprint, despite what you may have heard. This is because transporting food doesn’t play a significant role in a food’s final carbon footprint. An analysis from Our World in Data found that transport accounts for only six per cent of emissions from food, while producing dairy, meat and eggs accounted for 83 per cent.

And following all these rules is pretty much redundant if you then go on to waste food; a meta-analysis from 2018 found that food waste accounted for six per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. “Around the world, and in the UK, we waste over a quarter of the food that's produced and all of that food has a carbon footprint. Things like milk for instance, which we waste huge volumes of, have a pretty high carbon footprint,” says Reay. “By not overbuying, and not over serving at mealtimes, and keeping to use by dates, we can reduce that food waste and start having a really significant impact on our carbon footprint.”

Make your home more energy-efficient

Homes make up about 15 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in the UK. So if you’re looking to shrink your carbon footprint, start at home.

To reduce your house’s carbon footprint, the most effective thing to do is switching to green heating and electricity. But understandably, this may be too costly for a lot of people. The next best thing to do is make sure your home is well-insulated. Trapping heat effectively is a surefire way to trim down your energy usage – the biggest producer of carbon emissions in the home. Make sure heat drains like gusty lofts and window frames are fully stoppered up. Beyond this you can make additional efforts to draught proof your house – by blocking the edges of doors and windows for example. Replacing an inefficient gas boiler can yield important energy gains, and another tip is replacing halogen bulbs with more energy efficient LED bulbs.

When it comes to short distances, defaulting to a car quickly racks up your carbon output. For distances over a thousand kilometers, driving alone actually has a higher carbon footprint per kilometer than flying the same distance. Going carless for one year could reduce your emissions by about 2.4 tonnes of carbon dioxide .

But for many, it’s important to acknowledge that alternatives are limited: for people based in more rural areas, or those underserved by public transport, a car might be the only option to get around. But for city dwellers, there is generally always a better, more carbon-friendly alternative. Weigh up your options: can you take a bus, tube or tram? Walk? Cycle? If you are in ownership of a car, you can spread your carbon burden by inviting people to share your commute.

If you are a frequent car user, consider switching to an electric car. Although the electricity you feed into your vehicle will be partly produced by non-renewable energy, electric vehicles (EVs) are much more efficient, meaning overall CO2 emissions are lower. The lifetime emissions for an EV in Europe are between 66 and 69 per cent lower compared to that of a fossil fuel-powered car.

However, the embedded carbon of a new electric vehicle has to be taken into account. The CO2 produced in manufacturing the car might be higher than the lifetime emissions of the vehicle depending on how often you use it. It might be better to instead maintain your current vehicle and aim to cut down your usage.

Any new purchase comes with an embedded carbon price tag. “The embodied carbon in everything we buy, particularly single use or throw away stuff, has a real, big impact on our climate,” says Reay. This is especially pertinent for items we only use sporadically, for example lawnmowers or power drills.

“If you think about your phone, it's all the components – all those metal and plastic parts – and all of the energy that's got into it,” Reay says. “It has quite a big carbon footprint, and we're buying a new one each year.” Indeed, Apple has released figures showing that 80 per cent of a product’s carbon footprint is wrapped up in its production process, rather than the energy it consumes once it’s completed. Planned obsolescence means that we’re cycling through new handsets faster than ever before, with many of the discards simply being thrown in the bin. Reuse and reduce should form the pillars of your sustainable ideology.

And fast fashion – exemplified by the likes of £5 dresses from Primark and Zara’s weekly stock rotation – is hugely harmful to the planet. Aside from the production process itself – which expels 1.2bn tonnes of CO2 a year (more than the aviation and shipping industries combined) – the wear-once-then-toss attitude permeating high street fashion means that racks of flimsy clothes are quickly transformed into one million tonnes of waste a year , much of will be incinerated or added to landfill. Although difficult to do an exact calculation on the amount of carbon saved in buying second hand versus buying new (this would need to take into account factors such as the intensity of the production process, and how many times the piece of clothing had already been worn), research from WRAP found that extending the average life of clothes by just three months up to two years and five months would result in a five to ten per cent reduction in carbon, water and waste footprints of the items.

Although once the biggest doctrines of your classic eco-warrior, recycling only goes so far – three years of recycling can be wiped out by a return flight to Berlin from London. So it’s tempering our voracious consumerism that can make the biggest impact. And when it comes to brands or labels that brand themselves as “sustainable”, keep in mind that the most sustainable option is just buying less stuff.

Have fewer children

This one is controversial. Yes, having fewer children does in fact lower your overall carbon footprint. One study estimates that having one fewer child is estimated to save as much as 58.6 tonnes of carbon emissions a year (if the potential future emissions of a descendant were calculated based on historical rates and heredity). But the same co-author of that study has said that if you want to have children, go ahead and do it. The timeframe to stop the worst effects of climate change is so tight, reducing population will not be how we’re going to solve the climate crisis.

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ENVIRONMENT

What is a carbon footprint—and how to measure yours

Determining a carbon footprint is easier said than done, and it’s not clear how much weight we should put on it.

As awareness of climate change grows, so does the desire to do something about it . But the scale of the problems it causes—from wildfires to melting glaciers to droughts—can seem utterly overwhelming . It can be hard to make a connection between our everyday lives and the survival of polar bears, let alone how we as individuals can help turn the situation around.

One way to gain a quantifiable understanding of the impacts of our actions, for good and bad, is through what is known as a carbon footprint. But while the concept is gaining traction—Googling “How do I reduce my carbon footprint?” yields almost 27 million responses—it is not always fully understood .

What is a carbon footprint?

So, what exactly is a carbon footprint? According to Mike Berners-Lee , a professor at Lancaster University in the UK and author of The Carbon Footprint of Everything , it is “the sum total of all the greenhouse gas emissions that had to take place in order for a product to be produced or for an activity to take place.”

For most consumers in developed countries, these products and activities tend to fall into four principal categories: household energy use, transport, food, and everything else, which is mostly the products we buy, from utensils to clothes to cars to television sets.

Each of these activities and products has its own footprint; a person’s carbon footprint is the combined total of the products they buy and use, the activities they undertake, and so on. A person who regularly consumes beef will have a larger food footprint than his vegan neighbor, but that neighbor’s overall footprint may be larger if she drives an hour to work and back in an SUV each day while our meat-eater bicycles to his office nearby. Both their footprints may pale in comparison to the businesswoman across the street, who flies first-class cross-country twice a month.

Unsurprisingly, in general terms the size of a person’s carbon footprint tends to increase with wealth. In his book, Berners-Lee writes that the average global citizen has a carbon footprint that is equivalent to the emission of seven tons of carbon dioxide per year. However, that figure is approximately 13 tons for the average Briton and roughly 21 tons per person in the United States.; The “average American takes just a couple of days to match the annual footprint of the average Nigerian or Malian,” he writes.

How is a carbon footprint calculated?

It isn’t easy to calculate a carbon footprint; indeed, Berners-Lee calls it the “essential but impossible” measurement.

Consider, for example, the personal carbon cost of taking a commercial flight. On the one hand, the calculation is straightforward: take how much fuel a plane burns and how many greenhouse gases are emitted during the course of a flight and divide by the number of passengers. But the footprint is larger for first-and-business-class passengers, because they take up more space and because their higher cost creates an extra incentive for the flight to actually take place. Other considerations include how much cargo the plane is carrying, and the altitude at which the plane flies .

Even so, it is a relatively simple calculation compared to assessing the emissions involved in every step of, say, the manufacture of a car: the emissions that take place at the assembly plant, the generation of electricity to power that plant, the transport of all the component items, the factories at which the components were made, the creation of the machinery used at those factories and at the assembly plant and so on, all the way back to the extraction of the minerals that are the car’s building blocks.

Because of the complexity involved in such calculations, Berners-Lee concedes that in such cases it is “never possible to be completely accurate.” The good news, he argues, is that for most individuals, that doesn’t matter. “Usually, it’s good enough just to have a broad idea,” he says.

What steps a person can take to reduce their personal footprint the most of course depends on the kind of lifestyle they presently live, and the same actions are not equally effective for everyone. For example, switching to an electric car is far more impactful in Vermont , where more than half the state’s electricity is generated by hydropower, than in West Virginia, where it is almost entirely generated by coal. Berners-Lee notes that, “for some people, flying may be 10 percent of their footprint, for some people it’s zero, and for some it’s such a huge number that it should be the only thing they should be thinking about.”

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A cornucopia of calculators.

To that end, in recent years, a veritable cornucopia of personal carbon footprint calculators has emerged online. By entering information about your household energy use, food consumption, and travel habits, for example, these calculators aim to provide you with an approximation of the amount of greenhouse gases being emitted to support your way of life. This one from the Nature Conservancy focuses on home energy use, transportation, diet, and shopping; this, from the United States Environmental Protection Agency , also considers transportation and energy use but adds in waste—specifically, how much you recycle. It also enables you to calculate how much your footprint could be reduced by taking steps such as insulating your home, driving less, or procuring a more fuel-efficient vehicle. This one shows just how much of an idealized personal carbon budget is taken up by consuming two large cheeseburgers a month or spending two nights in a hotel.

Are carbon footprints just fossil fuel propaganda?

It has been claimed that the earliest such calculator appeared in 2004 as part of the “ Beyond Petroleum” campaign of oil giant BP —a fact that causes some observers to criticize the pressure to reduce personal carbon footprints as a “sham” to “promote the slant that climate change is not the fault of an oil giant, but that of individuals.”

“A few years ago, Shell promoted a tweet into my thread that asked, ‘What are you doing to reduce your carbon footprint?’” recalls Katharine Hayhoe , chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy and a professor at Texas Tech University. “So, I replied with something along the lines of, ‘You are responsible for 2 percent of global emissions, equivalent to the entire country of Canada; when you have a plan to get rid of those, I’d be happy to talk to you about my personal carbon footprint.’ And they hid my reply.”

“It’s really important that all of us think about what we’re consuming, whether it’s fish or furniture or air conditioning: where it came from, what impact it had,” says Kert Davies, director of the Climate Investigations Center . “But industry then turned it around and made it: ‘It’s not our fault, you’re using our product. You deal with it.’”

That is all the more egregious, he argues, given that the fossil fuel industry has directly fought to limit some of the measures that are often cited as ways for people to reduce their personal carbon footprints: more fuel-efficient vehicle standards, or clean energy technology , for example.

“If not for fossil fuel companies, you would already be driving an EV, your house would be more efficient to run if industry hadn’t blocked solutions and obscured the truth about the urgency of addressing climate change ,” Davies adds.

Do carbon footprint calculators have a role?

Hayhoe argues that there are other problems with the concept of personal carbon footprints, not least the fact that many of the proposed means to reduce those footprints are unavailable to those who, for example, don’t have access to public transport, or can’t afford the upfront cost of an electric car or a heat pump, or who live in food deserts , where healthier, lower-impact foods such as vegetables and grains are harder to come by.

“There’s a role for the personal carbon footprint concept in high income countries among middle-to-high income people,” she explains. “There’s a very big role for the personal carbon footprint among the very richest people in the world . But we have to realize it is a limited concept—it does not apply to everyone.”

In addition, she argues, acting by ourselves is just one small part of what is required to affect change in a system that, despite the best individual efforts, remains dominated by the production and use of fossil fuels.

“I would say personal carbon footprint calculators are a useful tool to assess the impact of your immediate actions: where you live, where you travel, what you eat,” she says. “But what’s much more important than your personal carbon footprint is your climate shadow . Where do you keep your money? How do you vote? What about the businesses you work with, or the university you’re a part of, or the Rotary Club of which you’re a member—what are they doing, and how could you advocate for change?

“So, in a nutshell, when people ask me what they should do, I say: Do something, anything, but then talk about it. The only way to bring the carbon footprint of everybody in rich countries to where it needs to be for a sustainable planet is to change the system, and to change the system we have to use our voice.”

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What's Your Carbon Footprint?

How much carbon dioxide do you send into the atmosphere? Anytime you do something that requires fossil fuels — like riding in a car, flying in a plane, buying something, eating something, or even just watching TV — you emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Our individual carbon dioxide emissions are a part of the total emissions on Earth. All of the cars and trucks that we drive, the boxes we ship, the products we manufacture, the emissions from the food we eat, the air-conditioning we use in our buildings — it all adds up.

Some people emit much more carbon dioxide than others. Worldwide, the average person produces about four tons of carbon dioxide each year. In the United States, each person produces about 16 tons of carbon dioxide each year. Because carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas , adding more of it to the atmosphere causes our climate to warm .

Driving a car that burns gasoline releases much more carbon dioxide than carpooling or taking public transportation, so driving makes your carbon footprint larger than other transportation choices. Ride a bike or walk instead to shrink your carbon footprint even more.

Pixabay/prvideotv

Calculate Your Carbon Footprint

You can figure out how much your actions affect greenhouse gases by using a carbon footprint calculator. A carbon footprint is the total amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere as a result of human activities. Your carbon footprint is the total carbon dioxide released due to your individual activities. Your household’s carbon footprint is the total carbon dioxide released by your home and all the people who live there. A carbon footprint calculator typically takes into account the greenhouse gases you produce at home and while traveling. It can also include the greenhouse gases produced to transport and make the food you eat and the things you buy.

Check out the carbon footprint calculators listed below and use one to calculate your carbon footprint:

CoolClimate Calculator : This in-depth calculator adds up your carbon emissions from home, travel, food, and shopping. It allows you to compare your footprint to others and helps you identify the changes you can make to reduce your impact on climate change.
Zerofootprint Youth Carbon Calculator : This kid-friendly calculator guides you through the process of calculating your family’s carbon footprint. You don’t need a login or email address, but you must name your school and birthday to use the tool.
EPA Household Carbon Footprint Calculator : Gather your home energy bills before you start for the most accurate calculation of your home’s carbon emissions. This calculator includes home energy, cars, and recycling, but doesn’t include other types of emissions. It includes helpful information about how much carbon dioxide you can save by making small changes around your house to decrease your impact on climate change.

Shrinking Your Footprint

Once you have calculated your carbon footprint, think about how you could make it smaller. We add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere as we go about our daily lives, but often we can make choices that reduce these emissions. For example, you might choose to ride a bike to the store rather than driving a car. Or you might find that renewable energy is available from your power company and make a switch. By reducing your carbon dioxide emissions, you will shrink your carbon footprint, and your choices will help keep the climate livable. The choices we make every day in our homes, our travel, the food we eat, and what we buy and throw away can help ensure a stable climate for future generations.

Different personal choices make different impacts on climate change.

Catrin Jakobsson, with data from Wynes and Nicolas (2017)

Climate Solutions
How Do We Reduce Greenhouse Gases?
Future Climate: Explore the Possibilities
Energy Choices and Climate Change

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What's Your Carbon Shoe Size?

Everybody in the world effects the environment one way or another. Whether you drive to work every morning or turn on a light switch in a room, you have an impact on the environment. This is called your "Carbon Footprint." Your carbon footprint is the amount of greenhouse gases that you release into the atmosphere in a year, and it is measured in units of carbon dioxide.

Your carbon footprint can be divided into 2 sub-categories: primary and secondary footprint. Your primary footprint is the greenhouse gases that are released into the air from you directly. For example: When you drive a car, the greenhouse gases would be considered Primary because you are the one burning the fossil fuels. Your secondary footprint is the greenhouse gases that are released into the atmosphere indirectly. For example: If you buy food that was imported from another country, those greenhouse gases would be secondary because even though you are not burning anything directly, that food had to travel more than 1,000 miles to get to your store. The transportation to and fro calls for the burning of fossil fuels, which builds up in the atmosphere.

The average carbon footprint for a person who lives in North America is about 20 tons per year. You may not realize it, but driving a car could let off 20 pounds per gallon alone. In order to help improve my carbon footprint, I calculated it online. It turned out that my carbon footprint was 10.2 tonnes. (1 ton = 2500 pounds) For my New Year's Resolution, I decided that I was going to strive hard to lower this number.

How can we help reduce our carbon footprint and protect our planet?

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle . One simple task that will reduce our carbon footprint tremendously is recycling. Recycling is when we reuse items and make them into new objects. By doing this we are decreasing the amount of greenhouse gases that are released into the atmosphere, and in some cases we are preserving our natural resources. For example: When you drink a bottle of water, it should be recycled afterwards because then that plastic can be made into another bottle. This cuts down on the amount of energy needed to make a new bottle from raw materials, and it reduces the amount of waste in garbage landfills. The Environmental Protection Agency stated that in 2006, Americans produced about 251 million tons of trash. Landfills are a source of methane, which is a greenhouse gas, and about 36% of the methane that comes from humans is from these landfills. One ton of waste can create about 123 pounds of methane, so if we can cut down on the waste in the landfills, the less methane will be released into the air.

Another very important way that we could reduce our carbon footprint is by avoiding the use of cars, trucks, or planes as best as we can. The burning of fossil fuels is harmful to our environment, so if you have the opportunity to walk or bike somewhere, take it!

Even though walking is a better alternative than driving, some times people have no choice. Car companies took this into consideration and now many are making hybrid cars. These special cars can run on a battery and burn less fossil fuel. Not only are cars going greener, but manufactures as well began to make energy-efficient appliances. The less energy an appliance uses, the less fossil fuel and energy is needed and burned. There are energy-efficient appliances for almost every need. If people buy an energy-efficient appliance, they can get tax credits, so it benefits both the planet they live on and themselves. Also, switch to fluorescent light bubs because they can save more than 60 % less energy.

If everybody does little tasks, such as recycling or switching to energy-efficient appliances, their carbon footprint will decrease, and the issue of Global Warming will get better. Make your New Year's resolution to lower your carbon footprint just like me. The changes I have made to my everyday lifestyle, such as recycling every object possible, really reduced my carbon footprint. Once you start, you will feel much better knowing that you are part of the effort in helping our earth recover from Global Warming.

Check out this video for more info!

Photo: My own drawing!

" Carbon Footprint Calculator " The Nature Conservancy.

Kulpinski, Dan. " Human Footprint: Where does all the stuff go? " National Geographic

Sheehan, Bill. " Zero Waste, Recycling and Climate Change "

Walser, Maggie. " Carbon Footprint " The Encyclopedia of Earth . July 14, 2010.

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What lifestyle changes will shrink your carbon footprint the most.

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You can reduce your carbon emissions, but the most influential changes will depend on your circumstances.

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In the beginning, her modest goal seemed daunting, but she quickly discovered that the two simple activities nourished her physical and mental well-being. She wanted to do them every day. “It’s no longer for the carbon — it’s for the fact that I genuinely love riding my bike and walking my kids to school,” she says. And that made her wonder: What other steps was she thinking of as sacrifices that might actually enrich her life?

A November 2019 survey by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication suggests that Cobb isn’t alone in her worries about climate change. Fifty-eight percent of the U.S. residents surveyed were “alarmed” or “concerned” about global warming. Cobb has turned her concern into action. It’s not too late to reduce the damage caused by global warming, but it will take drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, says Jonathan Foley, executive director of Project Drawdown , a San Francisco–based nonprofit research organization that identifies ways to reduce carbon emissions.

To keep global temperatures from rising too quickly, we need to re-engineer our society away from fossil fuels. A 2015 study calculated that to rein in warming, about 80 percent of global reserves of coal, 50 percent of natural gas reserves and 33 percent of the world’s oil must be left unused.

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We can’t get to drawdown, the point at which levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere start to steadily decline, with one easy fix, Foley says. Action is required on multiple levels — government, industry and individuals — and across multiple systems, including energy, transportation, housing and food. We need to do all of the things, says Foley, whose organization has identified more than 80 climate “solutions” available now. These range from renewable energy technologies to plant-based diets to mass transit. “To get to drawdown, we need them all,” Foley says.

When it comes to the changes that individuals can make, “the most effective thing that you can do depends on your specific circumstances,” says Christopher Jones, director of the CoolClimate Network at the University of California, Berkeley. His group has produced maps that estimate a household’s carbon footprint based on ZIP code and lifestyle.

The graphics below, based on CoolClimate Network calculations , will help you find your biggest levers for cutting emissions, which for U.S. households are, on average, the equivalent of 48 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.

Each action shows the tons of carbon dioxide equivalent saved per year:

Relevant assumptions are shown in italics.

Transportation

How you get where you’re going is one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, and the size of your transportation emissions usually depends on where you live, Jones says. City dwellers have more access to public transportation, while people in the suburbs tend to drive a lot more. For people who drive long distances, getting the most fuel-efficient car, a hybrid or an electric, may be the best way to curb emissions. Carpooling when possible, combining trips and leaving the car home once a week also help.

Action: Replace a 25 mpg car with …

An electric car.

A hybrid car (55 mpg)

A fuel-efficient car (40 mpg)

Assumption: Driving 12,000 miles per year

Action: Alternate commuting alone in a car with …

Carpooling two days/week.

Telecommuting five days/month

Assumptions: Car gets 25 mpg, commute is 25 miles round trip, carpool with one other person

Action: Replace 25 miles of driving per week with …

Assumption: Current car gets 25 mpg

Taking the bus

Assumption: Bus is diesel engine

Action: Practice “eco-driving”

Reduce rapid acceleration and braking and reduce top cruising highway speed from 70 to 65 mph.

Assumption: Driving 12,000 miles per year, fuel economy 25 mpg

Action: Change air filters regularly and keep tires properly inflated

These two actions raise efficiency by 3 percent each

If you fly, there’s a good chance that aviation emissions are your biggest lever. Once people can travel again, consider vacationing closer to home and look for alternatives to business travel, such as videoconferencing. Take ground transportation instead of flying whenever possible. When flying can’t be avoided, take the advice of Dan Rutherford, shipping and aviation director at the International Council on Clean Transportation: Fly like a NERD. Choose a New(er) aircraft; book Economy class; take a Regular, medium-sized plane instead of a less-efficient small regional or jumbo jet; and select a Direct flight.

Action: Eliminate one round-trip cross-country flight per year

Assumption: Based on approximate round trip from New York to San Francisco

The average U.S. home uses three to four times the electricity of a European one, Foley says. That’s mostly due to inefficient appliances and lighting and insufficient insulation. Those are all things that homeowners can address. Installing solar panels takes a big chunk out of your emissions. But if panels are too costly or just not feasible, purchasing renewable energy from a clean energy provider can offer the same emissions savings. Though options, like installing solar panels, are only available to people who own their home, there are plenty of other things that both renters and owners can do.

Action: Change your source of electricity

Purchase green energy from a clean energy provider.

Install solar panels at your home

Assumptions: Household uses 10,700 kilowatt hours of electricity per year and 100 percent of electricity comes from a clean energy provider or from solar panels

If home improvements are in your budget, go for optimized insulation, weather stripping and energy-efficient windows and appliances. Install thermostats that adjust the temperature based on when you’re home and awake. And, of course, bigger houses take more energy to heat, cool and light, plus more space means more stuff. “The majority of emissions regarding shelter come from the stuff you buy,” Jones says. If downsizing is an option for you, it’s worth considering.

Action: Replace 10 incandescent lightbulbs with LEDs

Assumption: Lights are on five hours per day

Action: Reduce your trash output by 20 percent

Assumption: Household throws out 0.5 cubic yards of trash a week

Action: Turn off the lights when not in use

Assumption: Shut five lights at 40 watts each for four hours per day

Action: Turn the thermostat …

Down 5° f in winter.

Up 5° F in summer

Assumptions: Home is about 1,850 square feet, heated with electricity

Action: Put desktop computer in sleep mode nights and weekends and turn off monitor during those times

Assumption: Remember to do this 50 percent of the time

Action: Install low-flow showerheads

Assumptions: Household takes two showers per day for eight minutes each; savings comes from heating water.

Action: Plant five trees in your yard

Assumptions: Some of the savings comes from reduced AC use as the result of shade from the trees.

Action: Line dry two loads of laundry per week

Assumptions: Machine-drying four loads of laundry uses 690 kilowatt-hours of electricity

The biggest lever to cut food emissions is to stop producing more food than we need. The United Nations estimates that the annual carbon footprint of global food waste is 4.4 gigatons of CO 2 equivalent. Americans, specifically, waste about 25 percent of the food we buy. According to Project Drawdown, adopting a vegetarian diet can also cut emissions, by about 63 percent, while going vegan can reduce them by as much as 70 percent. Agriculture is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, and meat and dairy production are the big contributors. Even cutting back on animal products can make a difference.

Action: Cut five servings a week of …

Beef, pork, lamb.

Other (processed meats, nuts …)

Poultry and eggs

Fats, oils, sugar and processed foods

Do individual choices matter?

When Cobb looked at her carbon footprint, she found that flying represented about 85 percent of her emissions. So she joined a community of people on Twitter who resolved to fly less, and she committed to cutting her business and personal flights by 30 percent. With the group’s support, she dropped another 30 percent the next year, but it wasn’t always easy. Her pledge didn’t make her many friends within the academic community initially. But the goal of flying less has become more mainstream, at least among her colleagues, as she’s shown it can be done.

“It started as an individual action,” she says, but her decision to forgo certain work travel created new opportunities for virtual conferences and other flying alternatives for her colleagues, too. “It has transformed into a collective-scale action to shift cultural norms,” Cobb says.

Social influence can drive change, says Diana Ivanova, a research fellow at the School of Earth and Environment at University of Leeds in England who reviewed emissions reduction options in April in Environmental Research Letters . If you see other people taking steps to shrink their carbon footprints, “you may feel more empowered to enact changes yourself.”

Researchers call this transmission of ideas and behaviors through a population “behavioral contagion.” That’s where individual action can be a potent force for change, says Robert Frank, a Cornell University economist. “Installing solar panels, buying an electric vehicle or adopting a more climate-friendly diet don’t just increase the likelihood of others taking similar steps, it also deepens one’s sense of identity as a climate advocate,” Frank writes in his 2020 book, Under the Influence: Putting Peer Pressure to Work . Those actions can also encourage other meaningful actions, like supporting candidates who favor climate-protecting legislation.

Some of the most significant action is happening at state and local levels. Your mayor and city council have a lot of power to reduce the community’s carbon footprint, says Cobb, who found herself getting more involved with each success. She was elected traffic chair of her neighborhood board in 2017 and is now working on improving biking infrastructure to make cycling safer for everyone.

Individual actions can create ripple effects, says ecological economist Julia Steinberger of University of Leeds. Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg helped spread awareness about aviation emissions, and now overnight train lines between European cities are reopening. “It wasn’t a big industry-wide decision or government regulation. It was a bunch of people deciding, we don’t want to fly anymore,” Steinberger says.

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Guest Essay

Worrying About Your Carbon Footprint Is Exactly What Big Oil Wants You to Do

By Auden Schendler

Mr. Schendler is the senior vice president of sustainability at the Aspen Skiing Company, the chairman of the board of the group Protect Our Winters and the author of “Getting Green Done.”

Everybody’s going carbon neutral these days , from the big boys — Amazon, Microsoft, Unilever, Starbucks, JetBlue — to your favorite outdoor brand , even ski resorts . Probably your neighborhood coffee roaster , too.

What’s not to like? Becoming carbon neutral means cutting greenhouse gas emissions as much as you can, then offsetting what you can’t avoid with measures like tree planting. Seems admirable.

Well, not exactly. Carbon neutrality doesn’t achieve any sort of systemic change. A coal-powered business could be entirely carbon neutral as long as it stops some landfill gas in Malaysia from entering the atmosphere equal to the emissions it’s still releasing. American fossil fuel dependence would remain intact, and planet-warming emissions would continue to rise. The only way to fix that is through politics, policymakers and legislation. But distressingly, most businesses don’t want to play in that arena.

Instead, they’re doing exactly what the fossil fuel industry wants: staying in their lane, accepting some blame for a global problem and maintaining the dominance of fossil fuels. They’re well intentioned, sure, but also clueless, even complicit.

Imagine if businesses put as much effort into climate lobbying as climate neutrality. Corporations wield tremendous influence over the political system. But on climate, most have decided to sit this one out. Notably, the five biggest tech corporations — Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Alphabet and Amazon — spend only 4 percent of their lobbying dollars on climate, according to Influence Map .

As a result, they avoid the chance to put in place systemic solutions in favor of carbon-neutral navel-gazing. Large corporations will protest, saying that they are lobbying on climate. But they are typically working both sides of the aisle. And their political contributions are mostly going in the wrong direction. Bloomberg Green examined political donations by more than 100 major American corporations and found last year that they were “throwing their support behind lawmakers who routinely stall climate legislation.”

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COMMENTS

Carbon Footprint Essay
The carbon footprints majorly apply to personnel, product, organizations, villages, cities, countries, etc. A personal carbon footprint can be defined as carbon dioxide caused by each person's daily activities i.e., clothing, food consumption, housing, and uses of vehicles in daily life. Unless a person lives in a cave, he is responsible for ...
The 35 Easiest Ways to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint
Currently, the average U.S. per capita carbon footprint is 18.3 tons. By comparison, China's per capita carbon emissions are 8.2 tons. We all have a ways to go to get to 1.87 tons. Calculate your carbon footprint at carbonfootprint.com to find out how you're doing. The EPA's carbon footprint calculator can show how much carbon and money ...
Carbon footprint
carbon footprint, amount of carbon dioxide (CO 2) emissions associated with all the activities of a person or other entity (e.g., building, corporation, country, etc.). It includes direct emissions, such as those that result from fossil-fuel combustion in manufacturing, heating, and transportation, as well as emissions required to produce the ...
Carbon footprint
The carbon footprint can be used to compare the climate change impact of many things. The example given here is the carbon footprint (greenhouse gas emissions) of food across the supply chain caused by land use change, farm, animal feed, processing, transport, retail, packing, losses.[1]A carbon footprint (or greenhouse gas footprint) is a calculated value or index that makes it possible to ...
Reducing the Carbon Footprint Essay example
Reducing the Carbon Footprint Essay example. Because carbon footprints are such hot topics in the news these days, it's an ideal topic for this particular paper. As concerns about global warming and potential climate change have continued to evolve the term "carbon footprint" has become ingrained in many people's consciousness.
Reducing Carbon Footprint
Reducing Carbon Footprint - Free Essay Examples and Topic Ideas. Reducing carbon footprint involves minimizing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that an individual, corporation, or country produces. This can be achieved through various efficient and eco-friendly practices such as conservation of energy, renewable energy sources, using ...
Carbon Footprint
Carbon Footprint - Free Essay Examples and Topic Ideas. Carbon footprint refers to the total amount of greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, that is generated by human activities such as transportation, electricity consumption, and industrial processes. It is a measure of the impact that human actions have on the environment and climate change.
How to reduce our carbon footprint
In general, mollusks and smaller fish like sardines are among the best options. If you need motivation beyond saving the world, increasing evidence shows that plant-based diets are healthier ...
Carbon Footprint Essays: Examples, Topics, & Outlines
Carbon Footprint Qantas Carbon Footprint Researcher One Corporate Governance Qantas corporate governance statement mentions that Qantas has an appropriate corporate governance structure to ensure the creation, protection, and enhancement of shareholder value (Qantas, 2012). Based on this statement alone it seems as if Qantas does not promote a triple bottom line or any other measure of ...
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Reducing the Carbon Footprint Essay example Because carbon footprints are such hot topics in the news these days, it's an ideal topic for this particular paper. As concerns about global warming and potential climate change have continued to evolve the term "carbon footprint" has become ingrained in many people's consciousness.
Carbon Footprint Essay
Carbon Footprint Essay. It is estimated that 13% of the United States greenhouse gas emissions are a direct result of the production and transportation of food. Transporting these foods and manufactured products requires petroleum-based fuels, and many fertilizers are fossil fuel -based.
The Value Of Reducing Carbon Footprints Environmental Sciences Essay
This report examines the concept and value of measuring and reducing a business or product carbon footprint as well some renewable energy systems available, that could contribute to Carbon reduction and energy efficiency. Guides and legislation already exist. In anticipation of future developments, regarding sustainable practices and strict ...
Carbon Footprint And Water Footprint Environmental Sciences Essay
Higher the carbon Footprint the more contribution an individual is making towards Global Warming. Water Footprint is also a subset of Ecological Footprint and is a novel concept. Water Footprint is an accounting tool which helps in determining the volume of fresh water consumed by an individual, group or city. Get Help With Your Essay.
The practical ways to reduce your carbon footprint (that actually work
For example, from London to Budapest, the train journey - albeit taking a gruelling 21 hours - produces the least carbon emissions, at 45.8kg of CO2. This is exceeded by both car (227.3kg) and ...
What is a carbon footprint—and how to measure yours
Consider, for example, the personal carbon cost of taking a commercial flight. On the one hand, the calculation is straightforward: take how much fuel a plane burns and how many greenhouse gases ...
What's Your Carbon Footprint?
A carbon footprint is the total amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere as a result of human activities. Your carbon footprint is the total carbon dioxide released due to your individual activities. ... For example, you might choose to ride a bike to the store rather than driving a car. Or you might find that renewable energy is ...
Climate change: Top 10 tips to reduce carbon footprint revealed
Top of the list is living car-free, which saves an average of 2.04 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per person annually. This is followed by driving a battery electric car - 1.95 tonnes of CO2 equivalent ...
What Is A Carbon Footprint Environmental Sciences Essay
A carbon footprint is made up pf the sum of a primary footprint and a secondary footprint. These are defined by Carbon Footprint Ltd. below. 1. The primary footprint is a measure of our direct emissions of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels including domestic energy consumption and transportation (e.g. car and plane).
My Carbon Footprint
647 Words. 3 Pages. Open Document. My Carbon Footprint This essay reviews my personal carbon footprint and discusses ways to manage it and reduce some of the biggest areas of my resource consumption. The footprint calculator that I used required that I answer a series of questions about my consumption habits, and based on the answers I provided ...
What's Your Carbon Shoe Size?
The average carbon footprint for a person who lives in North America is about 20 tons per year. You may not realize it, but driving a car could let off 20 pounds per gallon alone. In order to help ...
What Is a 'Carbon Footprint'? And 12 Other Climate Buzzwords
We can talk about the carbon footprint of companies, industries or even entire nations. And yes, individual actions do matter: Frequent flying, for example, comes with a huge carbon footprint. It ...
What lifestyle changes will shrink your carbon footprint the most?
The United Nations estimates that the annual carbon footprint of global food waste is 4.4 gigatons of CO 2 equivalent. Americans, specifically, waste about 25 percent of the food we buy. According ...
Opinion
Guest Essay. Worrying About Your Carbon Footprint Is Exactly What Big Oil Wants You to Do. ... for example, and sharply cutting back on smog and water pollution in the United States. Imagine if ...
PCF Calculator
Suppliers simply submit a BoM to our free calculator, and our machine-learning engine calculates their product's carbon footprint. Aligned Not only does the calculator standardise the calculation methodology so you can compare apples with apples, but it's also PACT and ISO 14067/14044.

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Fats, oils, sugar and processed foods

Scope 3 calculation methods: Everything you need to know