CARBON FOOTPRINT
Imagine someone living in a warm place with a house built of mud and straw, who cooks using firewood, with an ox to plow the land, and who grows all their own food and all the food their animals need. Would they be adding extra carbon dioxide to the atmosphere? The answer is no.
Everything they used to grow is part of the natural carbon
cycle. Where carbon dioxide record by photosynthesis and release again when
living things respire or when the wood burns. The person could be somebody
living before we started using fossil fuels, or living in a village remote from
centers of industry. They have a carbon footprint of zero.
The amount of carbon dioxide measures the carbon footprint.
Your lifestyle adds to the atmosphere because of fossil fuels or the cutting
down of trees, etc. The world average is about 4 tonnes per person per year.
The more times carbon footprint arises by using cars, flying
by air, heating, and electricity. Also, the things used in homes. Also,
clothes, food, leisure activities, and buildings, manufacturing, and public
services generate it.
Of course, if your country generates electricity without
burning fossil fuel for example, nuclear power or replenishable such as wind
or hydroelectric, your carbon footprint reduces.
HOW TO REDUCE CARBON FOOTPRINT?
The question that is on everybody's minds about carbon footprint are the five things? What are the three things? What is the one thing? That I can do to be more sustainable to reduce my carbon footprint. That is the question that everyone always wants the answer to.
Keep in mind that there is no one answer to one question.
There are so many answers, there are so many opinions, and there are so many
ways that we can be more sustainable. I want to give you some things that are
accessible and doable and also I'm going to make about a big, big difference.
But keep in mind I can't predict the future or I can't look
into my globe and say this is what you can do. Because this is the answer, I
don't have the answer yet I have. Some tips, I have some ideas; have some
things that are based on my study and my knowledge that can make an enormous
difference.
There are different ways to be more sustainable, which are
given below:
Before I get into it is that it isn't an individual
responsibility, it's a collective responsibility. Or that's us as people,
that's government's, that's businesses, that's companies, that's the world. We
will not save this planet by taking a coffee cup to the cafe every day. There
are so many, so much more new to this, there's so much more complicated. So
keep that in mind and remember that it's about our general attitude about how
we are living and making big changes overall.
If you want to live more sustainably in your day-to-day life,
then hopefully these will help you.
Most people are now aware of the disastrous effects of the
climate crisis and the many ways that we humans are contributing to it.
Scientists say that over the next decade we have to reduce global emissions in
half to give us a good chance of limiting global heating to below the critical
2 degrees Celsius of warming. Otherwise, the ever-growing number of heatwaves,
droughts, and floods that we have seen will continue to soar.
Now we come to the three r's that everybody knows reduce
reuse recycle. I talk about reducing the number of things that you buy point
blank period. Every single thing we buy has a resource, water, a greenhouse gas
footprint. We don't see in the production, in the mining, in the shipping, etc
of getting that item to you, so I talk about eco minimalism. Buying as little
as we can to have the smallest footprint in the environment. As possible, by
not partaking in consumerism, you are reducing your carbon footprint because the
items that you would buy will not be created.
There's no demand for them, or at least you're not creating a demand for
more of it now. It doesn't mean you buy nothing at all eco-minimalism
means you buy the things that you need that you've really through, that you
find to be useful in your life, so that's what reduce means to me.
One that is very important for me to talk about for reusing.
I think this is pretty simple, but basically reusing what you already have
instead of buying something new. It is going to have a smaller footprint
because you already own that item and you didn't have to buy another one. So I
won't spend too much time on reuse but something else that is like reusing that
will reduce your carbon footprint. It is about buying all your clothing, all
your home goods, pretty much everything buying it secondhand. These are all
different tips that feel very similar but when you're buying something
secondhand. You're diverting waste from the landfill, you're taking something
that someone else bought that they didn't want and bring it into your home to
use for yourself and save it from going to the landfill. But more importantly, you're saving yourself from buying something new and creating a demand for that
item and again wasting the resources that buying that product knew would have
contributed to.
And the last r recycling, having things we can recycle is
very important. Currently, doing recycling to be more active in your
communities and in your neighborhoods to tell people what is or isn't
recyclable. It's very important and being able to make something out of
something that already exists, which is recycling, requires us to make fewer
items hence have a smaller carbon footprint.
Obviously, a huge part of our greenhouse gas emissions all
over the world comes from personal vehicles. Anything we can do to reduce our
dependence on fossil fuels is going to have a smaller carbon footprint, so
whether that is driving less, so combining errors if it means carpooling with
someone when you're going to work or if you're going on a road trip. Here, I
introduce the term eco-driving that I only learned this term, where you use the least amount of gas that you can by making your routes as efficient as you can
and then the obvious of walking more and biking.
It would be difficult for many people who don't live in major cities to just start walking and biking more. But try to think about it the next time you have an opportunity that maybe it works.
The next one of the biggest things is to be more food
conscious. We eat three, four-five times a day and that foods come from
somewhere. We all know by now that animal foods are much worse for the
environment and plant foods don't mean you have to go vegan. Because I know
that for some people that's not doable and it doesn't mean also that people who
eat meat in poorer countries or in lower-income families are going wrong
because they aren't. I'm just saying if you can eat less meat, then that's quite
a good thing to do because you're going to reduce your carbon footprint.
Vegetarian's carbon footprint is much lower than meat-eaters and then a vegan
is even lower. If you just go straight for the plants, you're saving all the
waste, the resources, the food, the water that goes into looking after animals
for food. If you think about where your food comes from if you try to source
from local farmers. if you try to eat seasonally. If you are aware of your food
waste and you compost your food and you don't throw things away. If you're
aware of the packaging eat your food comes in, these are all ways we could be
more food conscious and it can be something that is a journey and takes time.
But if you learn about it, it could be something that just is a lifestyle change. Avoided throwing food away, they would have also treated some foods as luxuries and other foods as basics and not overdone it. I think more like them, more sustainably and that's being more food conscious. So that thought process might help you if you're trying to think about how you can be more food conscious.
There are a million different ways that I can reduce my
footprint on this planet. What you can do is not travel completely frivolously.
Take advantage as much as you can when you have taken a flight, so not taking a
bunch of small flights. If you can take one flight, that's kind of like a
bigger trip taking direct flights is going to reduce your carbon footprint by a
lot.
So if you're taking a direct flight, the flight's only
taking off once as opposed to if you have a connecting flight, it's taking off
twice, hence a larger carbon footprint, so flying less and or choosing more
eco-friendly airlines.
So we are definitely making advancements here flying has a
huge carbon footprint. We shouldn't be doing it without some sense of
consciousness of the decisions that we're making and doing it in the best way
that we can.
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