I'm pretty darn proud of my house

whoa how did you get the smiley face?

oh, okay I see

That's a low Kgs!

nice!

Wow, I am very impressed, one of my categories is 6,000 kgs of Co2.

But not the total.

When my professor asked us to calculate our carbon footprint, I was pretty shocked. I could not believe how big my family's carbon footprint is. So, when we were asked to do this assignment the idea of how my family could reduce their carbon footprint really interested me. I found this article that shows a bunch of different cool ways to reduce our footprint. Such as using less paper, growing our own vegetables and even watching what our thermostat is set at!
https://amerisleep.com/blog/reduce-fami … footprint/

That’s very interesting and I agree that it is startling at first seeing the numbers on paper. I think every one in school should have to do a project that includes calculating your carbon footprint it really puts things in perspective and helps you personally relate to the global issue of climate change. For me it really motivated me to find solutions to lower my carbon footprint. There are lots of ways to lower it, some are expensive and some are equally as effective and cost nothing. I would suggest  to start out find what actions in each category (food, transportation, home energy etc, purchases) have the biggest impact and do what you can to change those. This will help you chose your battles and make the biggest dent in your carbon footprint with the least amount of change. For me one was not knowing I could bring reusable containers to get takeout in. Another one was how and how often I wash my clothes. What ever you chose to do even a small change is a step in the right direction for the whole world.

My family produces 116454 kgs of CO2 a year, which is pretty bad. I would like to change that by turning off the lights more often, and to using less lights in our house.

I would like to reduce this number, but I don't know if turning off lights will work. Does anyone have any other ideas?

My biggest thing on my carbon footprint was transportation. You could try biking and/or walking to more places. If this is kind of hard to do, you could try carpooling more or taking more public transportation. Also, I don't know very much about this, but I think turning off the lights when not in use does something. So make sure to still turn off lights and electronics when not in use.

I feel as though we should turn off lights more often in my household. My brother leaves his light on almost all day! I try my best to remember to turn off the lights, but sometimes I don't remember to, so I think I can change that:)

Well, I already bike to school, but yeah, I think I'll start turning off the lights in my house WAAAYY too much. ...

Well how often do you use a heater? If so in the winter you could layer and put on blankets it works has well a heater hope this helps!

Hey! That's a good idea, thanks!

These are all great ways to lower your carbon footprint.I found that food was a big contributor for mine as well as transportation. For food i think it would be great to make sure you use all the food in your home and if some seems to be rotten, there are some great recipes on the internet for food scrap meals and use them as leftovers. Another great way is to buy locally whenever you have the option, although it is hard to find local shops if you live remotely.It is important to conserve water. Reducing shower times and using more cold water will save you money and not effect your carbon footprint as much.

Yeah! I'll try that!

I would make my home energy efficient by using LED lights, using electric internal heating and cooling, and electric appliances. I would get my energy from hydro electric dams because in BC energy is created with water. I would choose to live near public transit so I can commute to places I would need to go to like school or work in the future. I would get my food from grocery stores that have lower carbon footprints like Whole Foods or Costco.

So I have a large(r) family, there are 6 of us. We try to grow most of our veggies and carpool whenever we can, and I try to walk whenever I can, but I was wondering if there's anything else we can do to try to lower our carbon footprint?

I suggest saving energy at home because most of our electricity and heat is powered by coal, gas, and oil which uses a lot of energy. To reduce your carbon footprint, you should consider lowering your heating and cooling, switching to LED light bulbs, and washing your clothes with cold water instead of hot. Another suggestion is to hang your clothes to dry them instead of the dryer. Food wise, eating less meat and dairy can lower your carbon footprint. It's good that you're growing most of your veggies because producing/growing plant-based foods can result in fewer greenhouse gas emissions and uses less energy. I also highly suggest you throw less food away because it wastes all the energy and resources that was used to grow, package, and transport it. Foods in landfills also produce methane, so consider composting leftover food and using everything you buy.

By carrying out this project i was able to calculate my carbon footprint within the society. I am quite satisfied with the results obtained despite my awareness of being able to improve my impact on the planet. In some areas I'm trying to do my best, while in others I know I can do better: particularly in choosing my food. But how can I do it? I could start by enhancing the products of my territory or organic ones, but what else could I do to reduce the portions of red or white meat?
Advice would be welcome!

Good afternoon! Thank you so much for your post and working on this carbon footprint project! One part of my carbon footprint project that I was surprised the most by is that my food footprint was on the lower scale compared to the rest of my categories. Pertaining to your question, about how to reduce red or white meat, depending on where you live you could try to consume more fish or vegetable options. Luckily, I live near seafood shops and places where high quality seafood is so I tend to eat lots of salmon or shrimp. I would suggest you to try that as one option in order to eat less meat like steak or chicken. Another way to decrease meat consumption could be finding high calorie vegetable meanings. For example, sometimes I will eat "cauliflower steaks" or other high calorie meals that can be just as delicious as meat. Some people even eat "Beefsteak Mushrooms" and put sauce on it because it has a similar steak texture and will use that to eat instead of regular steak. I will attach a picture and a link to show you what I am talking about. Thank you so much and have a great rest of your day!

hello

I know I can definitely change my carbon foot print because my transportation level is 8359 kgs. the way I can reduce this is by using public transportation,biking,and carpooling.

         !IF ANYONE ELSE HAS IDEAS TO HELP PLEASE PUT THEM IN THE COMMENTS!

If you have friends that bike then go with them. If you have friends that have a medium car or you do use that to carpool in.

Those ideas are very good ones you can try using those ideas as many times as you can and very often.:D

I think air travel is a real problem and we should do our best to find other ways to travel.

Yes, I also agree with that. But you can also see if you can walk more and bike because it's good exercise and you can get places.

But still even w/o air travel your travel on ground could be very high.

Well, an airplane uses way much more gas than your car does, so it's better to use your car.    At least 100g vs. At least 10g   (g=gallons)

If you live next to any of your friends offer to carpool or ask to ride a bike with them this will motivate them by not using a extra car while having fun at the same time.

I've just completed the questionnaire and i discovered my carbon footprint is 5152 kgs.
More specifically, i got: 2869 kgs in "Home", 1462 kgs in "Food", 261 kgs in "Purchases" and 560 kgs in "Transports".
i think that's a good score, considering that avarage, in my region, is about 8000 kgs.

However, I'd like to reduce it in some way.
Respect for nature is something that my parents have taught me since I was younger, and now I'm used to pay attention to everything related to the environment.

Most kgs of my footprint comes form the "Home" section, i wanted to ask you some tips, advise and green alternatives to reduce my carbon footprint.

To lower your carbon footprint in the home section, I think you could install solar panels to lower the carbon from heating your home.

To lower your carbon footprint you can turn off lights when you are not using them and you can also use blankets instead of using a heating system.

Here is my answer to this question:
To lower your carbon footprint in the "Home Section", you can use less heat in your home (use blankets instead of a heater), use fans instead of air-conditioning, use less incandescent light-bulbs and more LEDs and florescent bulbs, turn off the light when you don't need it, turn off the water until you need it, take shorter showers, use cold instead of warm/hot water to wash your clothes, compost leaves or yard waste, and put less things in the trash; recycle and compost more.:D:D:D:D:D

you can use LED lights, and an electric heater/AC like a heat pump

You could use air conditioning as sparingly as possible.( if you have it).

To reduce the carbon in "foods" you can make sure to buy foods that you absolutely need, and eat food before the expiration date so you don't waste it.

You could also use reusable bags for groceries

Reduce car use??

Maybe you could bike or walk more to nearby places and if its cold maybe layer and use blankets instead of using a heater? I hope this helps!

I m at 9457 in my carbon footprint is that good

9457 is about average.

9457 kgs is the average and I think if you want to decrease it, you may turn off the light when you not use, eat well, if you house near the school and you should walk(use car when your home is far away).

The average amount of CO2 a person produces a year from GAS is 4.6 metric tons. Can YOU do less?

yes with me I think that I should turn off the light,walk, waste less and eat healthy.

my transportation is very high it is double all of my other subjects like home energy,food,and purchases.

same. Mine was going to be average but then I put down the amount of round-trips I take per year and doubled my carbon footprint.

OK I may have lied with that title because I wont be talking about what the numbers for my carbon footprint are. just.. other stuff. OK so thank you for reading this things lets get started.
My parents LOVEEE keeping our lights on. I will walk into an empty room with literally no one in it and the lights will ALWAYS be on, unless I was there recently, because I always turn off the lights. also I'm not sure if this is on topic or whatever, but my parents didn't have a compost bin for practically a YEAR. It honestly took a lot of convincing, and they still don't use it! My dad also throws everything in the trash. He never gives anything away. OK, now I'm REALLY off topic. than you if you've made it this far. my point is, I wish I could reduce my carbon footprint and have my parents care more about the environment, because I really do and I hate polluting the lovely earth.

oop I had a bit of a typo there-

Maybe I could power my entire my house using electricty, and then use led light bulbs so that it doesn't harm the environment.

You could use Solar Panels and use Electric or fuel efficient cars

you can also reuse the trash in your house

take shorter showers

go GREEN!!!!

you can try biking,walking, and taking public transportations

smiley face lol

you could bike, walk, or take the bus to school if you live to far.

Thamk you

you could use your car less and eat more healthy like greens and eat more proteen you could make sure you sort right and you can take other forms of travle like bike's skate boards or anything you like to ride you can do carpool or ride public transe port to.

not go on as many plane trips

My family's footprint is pretty good for the food and the home, but the transportation is alarming. It literally doubled the home and food combined!

Maybe you can ask if you can carpool with people and try biking or another way of transportation like walking? I know my food is not that great because I am not vegetarian but something I do know is how you can try helping your transportation.(:

Another idea is to start using public transportation to get to places.

you can also try biking instead of public transport like cars and busses

mine isn't good either but that's because me and my family took a trip to Europe and the flight was like 16 hours.

You can walk or bike to places instead of using a car.

I think one way to fix it is to use other kinds of transportation like public or bike and stuff like that.but you could also plan less vacations or go out less. you could cut on the amount of times you use the car and maybe use a bike or a skate board if its a short distance.

maybe you can start riding a bike and being less in cars

Riding bikes to school or work will make the world a whole lot cleaner. You could also take public transport or carpool with a friend.

My home, transportation, and my purchases were all under average. My food category was pretty high above the average where I live. I think this is because I don't eat enough vegetarian meals

I don't eat any either and I have mine under the average for where I live.

I checked today and my foot print in travel alone is 6,143 and my regions is only 2,557, now to be fair I have bean traveling a lot lately but I would still like some tips on how to refuse it, wile traveling

It is super cool that you are traveling a lot! Maybe try doing some road trips, maybe staying closer to home!

I think road trips would still waste energy, but that's a good idea! I like road trips. anyways, you could try biking places with your family too! you can buy a wagon thing that I used to have as a kid that connects to the parents bike and you can just ride around.It won't be able to get you places far, but it works!

My carbon footprint for food is 2 times a average person and I don't eat a lot. I should eat less.

I wouldn't say that you should eat less, eat the average amount of calories for your age and you should be good. Maybe try to eat more vegan/vegetarian meals and order groceries when you're almost out of food in the fridge. I don't recommend eating less if you already don't eat a lot since that's unhealthy, I hope this helped.

Maybe the average person just eats not enough?

I think that eating less is not the most healthy option, you could always try more vegetarian meals, maybe eat less meat in one day.

Me and my family try to bike whenever we can to save energy also we enjoy biking.

sorry not "also" "mainly because"

nice job unanimous person, I like to bike as well, but I mostly walk

Me to!

I also ride my bike a lot

i do bmx and bike to school and back every day me and my family bike a lot but its hard to go everywhere on a bike i also go to the park with my friends and we try to do wheelies we all fail though

my family's carbon footprint is pretty low except for the transportation and food, I think that my family should eat more plant based meals and that I should ride a bike to school more often and that my family should a more energy efficient car.

Plant a garden in your backyard and/or find an easier way to get to school also.

I think eating more plant-based meals is a great way to start. Maybe experiment with different ways to go/bike to school.

I hope this is helpful!

Something you can do to reduce the amount of time your lights are on is to always make sure to turn off the lights when you leave the room or if you see a light(s) is on and no one is in the room also turn it off (I do the second one almost every day).

I looked back at my carbon footprint sheet and noticed that my family turns on our lights many hours a day, so I can make sure we turn off devices, light, and water when not needed to reduce our footprint.

with me I think that if you turn off the light it is good .Also you may walk or bike to school.With me I think that eat well can make you produce less carbon dioxide.

With me I think that my family need to decrease carbon dioxide because temperature of the earth get high and this make me that I need to protect the earth.

You can do this by replacing your light bulbs with LED bulbs and turning off lights when your not using them, you can also reduce your carbon dioxide by turning off the water when your not using it and turning off electronics when your not using them. Bike to school if you can or walk if you don't have a bike. It's awesome that you want to protect the earth since its a very important thing.

you can also use a bike instead of cars

With my family I think that my mom told me that I need to turn off the light when I'm not using it.Also I walk to home every week.

I saw that my data of the carbon dioxide is 4777 kgs and the average in my region  is 9727 kgs .

my family produces a very large carbon foot print

my family also has a very large carbon footprint due to our flights and numerous trips to Tahoe.

My carbon footprint is really high in transportation because I go on lots of flights throughout the year so I think I should try to go on less trips and not fly in an airplane as often.

My carbon footprint is lower than the average American exepct it is a bit high in food  so I think I should start eating more plant based meals. And it is a bit high in transportation so I should start riding my bike more.

We mostly ride our bikes to school but it takes up half of my energy but it saves energy and gas but we carpool with our friends with their car and my mom's car when she's not working. But riding your bike is fun when you do it with your friends!

I thought that my carbon footprint was high because my transportation column was very high. Since I visited the East Coast (NYC, DC, Boston), my flight there and back were much higher than the average. Even though I love to visit places like New York City, I  believe that without a trip there my carbon footprint would be much lower.

we have been driving to places which it would only take a little bit longer to bike. It's not needed and we should start biking instead of wasting gas.

I also recommend maybe scooters too, they are honestly easier for me less leg work

My carbon foot print was only about 300 above average(9,700) even though I flew in a plane for over 25 hours, and in a car for about 50 which I think is really good, I would still like some tips on how to reduce my foorprint.

My family's footprint is pretty good for the food and the home, but the transportation is alarming. It literally doubled the home and food combined!

My answer:
I think you can use more public transportation to get to places and walk or bike to school. You could also get a car that has good fuel efficiency.

My family's footprint is pretty big. we have a large house and we keep it heated with gas. There are also 5 of us so the environmental costs add up. I was wondering for some tips for things to ask my family to do to lower our carbon footprint as a family?

You and your family could try to turn things off when you're using them, and can try to use public transportation, biking more often, and using blankets instead of heating at night.

You can turn off more lights, take shorter showers, or bike scooter walk or skatebord more.

I think you could get solar panels. It would be expensive, but if you heated your house with solar panels, it would be much more sustainable.

You could maybe turn off the water while brushing your teeth and taking shorter showers and baths--- and maybe on hot days just take cold showers? Just a thought.

You could try carpooling and/or taking public transportation. Another idea (if possible depending on how far you live from day to day activities) is biking and/or walking. I really enjoy biking because it gets you to places pretty fast and is a good source of exercise.

for thelok I try to turn off things but my ADD makes it really hard to stay focus and remember things so some times I leave things on.

you could try to turn off lights when you leave rooms and not us heating and cooling as much.

You can try to turn off thing when you're not using them and to bike to school.

In addition you could also try to be more conscious of your water use and also start to make it a daily habit to place trash in the right bins.

I should not eat as much snacks when I get home from school and not break all the plants when I am walking to school.

After calculating my carbon footprint, my family's carbon emission is roughly 10+ kg. Over half of that is from transportation, since my high school is 6 miles away from me. My parent's car model is a decade or two old and may emit more carbon dioxide than most other vehicles, and it'll be passed down to me. It is very possible I could save the environment by purchasing an electric vehicle as soon as I can, or deciding to bike the 6 miles to go to school and then another 6 to get home, but I would be saving myself time and money (and even my own energy if I don't bike 12 miles a day) by continuing what I do. What do you guys think are some ways I could somehow reduce my carbon emission from transportation?

I think some ways to reduce your carbon emissions from transportation is use public transportation like the bus or to carpool whenever you can with friends to school. Another way is since you said the car would be pass down to you is to keep you tires filled becauseY ou can reduce your carbon dioxide emissions by about 275 pounds per year by making sure your tires are filled to the recommended pressure. You will also save up to 5 percent on your gasoline expenses and your car will ride smoother.

I think that in order to reduce your footprint you could consider to use public means of transports such as buses or even trains, which produce almost 0 pollution. Another way could be to save some money and contribute with your parents to buy an electric vehicle.

even if something like biking sounds hard, over time, you would get used to it.

Biking is hard but when you do it a lot you build muscles,you may be sore like taking a hike but one way to build up your muscles for biking is going to 1 mile bike ride bit by bit and slowing move up until your ready.

You can try biking if you want to. But since it could be hard to bike twelve miles everyday to your high school you could try public transportation or carpooling with a friend it could help a lot!

That sounds hard, you could try taking the bus or biking. It might sound hard but it isn't that hard and you will get used to it over time.

no more planes

I disagree because how would we get from another far place to another some people won't want to use boats because they have sea sickness

I disagree,because how can we can get to one place to another if we can't drive.

I agree, how are we going to get to a far place??

I disagree with no more planes because it would release even more unhealthy gases for the environment if you drive to a far place instead of using a plane.

me and my family went on a tour of Europe so that means that we took up a lot of transportation CO2.

so I think that we could only go to Italy or France.

sometimes I feel bad that I'm not contributing, but in reality,even just recycling and  reducing waste helps the world.:)

That makes sense I also agree that sometimes contributing can be hard but that little effort can help the world.One thing that you could do is riding your bike more often instead of driving it is also a good workout.

Global warming is a really big issue that is vital to learn about and we can stop it from getting worse for our planet. I did a carbon footprint form and my carbon and was surprised that my food and transportation was pretty high. I then thought that what makes my transportation so high was that I go on a decent amount of vacations that require planes to get there. Another thing was that my food was high because of red meat. We can help the earth be a better place by eating vegetarian on some days and not use planes as often.

I relate to this. Whenever I take vacations I usually fly. It's kind of hard to control this since I don't choose how many flights I take. The best thing I can do is alter things in my life that are under my control.

which is better driving or flights?

I was very surprised to see how My Carbon Footprint was very high I traveled a lot through the year and used my phone a lot and also had the heat and AC on through the year we also have lights on in our house all the time.

your family could turn off lights to save energy and you could carpool when traveling with friends

If I had my own home, something I would do to make it more energy efficient would be remembering to turn the lights off every time I leave the house and I won't be back for a significant amount of time.  I would get my electricity from solar panels that I would put up myself attached to the roof, and make sure to put up just enough so that I would solely need the energy produced by the solar panels to survive successfully in my home.
My house would be located somewhere near a city, so it would take less carbon emission to go places every time I had to go somewhere. I would also live somewhere by public transit so that it would be more eco-friendly to take the bus or the bart train once in a while. I would grow my own food in a garden in my backyard, so I wouldn't be wasting food or money.

very good

Reflecting on my family's footprint, I did not realize that the contributors to carbon were either extreme or did not make much of a difference. Throughout the test I would take note on how much that certain category would contribute, and most times it would be shocking. Most of the time, I had previous knowledge from others such as teachers and my dad, but I never knew it would be that much. For example, I never thought water usage in showers would count for so much. I always had knowledge that the amount of water one uses wastes clean water, but I never thought it would be so huge in regards to carbon. Another question I was shocked at was my diet, not being vegetarian. I never knew that what you eat contributed to over a fifth of my footprint. I would like to know why/what causes it to be so high.

While calculating my family footprint I noticed how small my carbon emissions for my house are compared to the average. This led me to believe my total carbon emissions would be low. But when I got to the transportation section I realized that when my family travels we admit much more carbon than the average family even with having an electric car. For my calculation, I was way over the normal transportation average because of how many plane flights I have been on this year. When you add that total for each one of my family members, that is a lot of carbon emissions. It is interesting to see in other posts in this discussion how other families have most of their carbon emissions coming from either their food or their home. This just shows how different lifestyles cause different types of emissions. The most effective thing to reduce my household carbon emissions it to either not travel as much or find alternatives to planes when traveling. However, for transportation, my family will often try and carpool to reduce our emissions.

I definitely relate to this. I thought that my family's carbon emissions would be a lot lower than other people. When I got my results back, I noticed that most of my carbon emissions came from my home and transportation. My family travels a lot, which I love, but the amount of carbon used when we fly is a little concerning. We went on a lot of plane trips this past year, which really added up. I also noticed that my home carbon use was higher than average. I hate that these two categories are completely out of my control, because although my carbon use for food and purchases was below average, home and transportation, which are typically not controlled by me, were way above normal. I also agree that it is very interesting to see just how different people’s lifestyles translate to carbon use. I have noticed that everyone is very different when it comes to how much carbon we produce, but what is the most devastating is that we are all to blame for excess carbon emissions. I have noticed around my home town that people in poverty are more likely to produce more carbon from food and home than an upper middle class person, and a rich person is more likely to produce more carbon from purchases and transportation than someone in poverty. I hope to be able to limit the amount of carbon I use from transportation when I live alone in the future, but I also hope we find a way to make airplanes and cars more eco-friendly and create less carbon emissions (because I hate the idea of never being able to travel to see different countries or to see my family).
- Mason B

I agree because especially in the US families have very large contributions  to carbons effects on global warming and climate change. This happens because of greenhouse gas emissions that traps heat in the atmosphere. The world is warming faster and families especially in the US contribute to large carbon footprints. Families cause large carbon emissions and a lot of energy consumptions. According to statistics household consumption accounts for 30–80% of the national carbon emissions. The average US household produces 7.5 tons of CO2 equivalents per year.

Unfortunately, I think that the conflict between wanting to help the environment while still wanting to visit your loved ones is a complicated matter that isn't discussed very often. For some context, I have a pretty tight-knit extended family that I have visited quite often recently, especially as my older relatives have been dealing with medical issues. Although I was aware that I have been traveling by air more than usual recently, I was pretty surprised to see that transportation was by far my largest area of carbon emissions (I emitted approximately 4,000 kgs while the average person in my area emits 2,557 kgs) . I already expected my transportation score to be relatively high from the 2-3 days a week when I drive to school instead of taking the bus or need to drive to after school activities but my emissions from airplanes were by far the highest of the entire survey. This made me question what side to take when deciding whether to spend time with my family as I still care about the environment and don’t want to be responsible for emitting such a large amount of carbon dioxide for what some might consider a “want” instead of a “necessity”.

I also started to wonder whether the carbon I emit through transportation could be balanced out if my home, food and purchases emissions could remain relatively low. According to the survey, my food (744 kgs) and purchase (309 kgs) emissions were substantially lower than the average citizen in my region. I think that this is because I have a mostly vegetarian diet and no longer make as many clothes purchases due to my school uniform.

In your opinion, do you think that missing out on family memories is a price we need to pay in order to combat climate change or do you think that there are alternative methods to balance out/limit our carbon emissions?

From my experience, a large contributor to most family’s carbon footprint is food. In a time when we have every food imaginable at our fingertips, we tend to stop considering the environmental impacts of different foods. One thing to think about is if the fruits or vegetables you are buying are in season. If they aren’t, the food can have an exponentially larger carbon footprint than if you had bought it when it was in season as now the food has to be shipped in from somewhere else in the world. Because of the long journey the food has to take, it is also usually covered in pesticides which contribute immensely to greenhouse gas emissions.

My overall takeaway from my personal footprint was that I am overshooting my footprint with regards to transportation astronomically. This is unacceptable as someone who prides themself as a devoted climate change advocate. Most of my transportation kg came from traveling: I traveled internationally twice this year, across country once, and across the state twice. As I discovered from answering the survey questions, these airplane flights contributed exorbitant amounts of kg to my footprint. I can cut back on this, not only for myself, but for my family as well, by limiting the amounts of vacations and other trips we go on. For example, if my family is considering go on vacation for a holiday, I will advocate that we instead stay at home, or at least travel somewhere closer to our home (rather than across the pond!).

My total carbon footprint was abit above ther average. I think that I am doing ok to keeping the carbon emissions low but i could be doing more. The things thaat really pushed up my total number was the flights and transportation. I think I should take public transport more then getting a ride everytime I need to get somewhere. If I start doing that regulary my carbon emissions will lower and be around average. Another thing that vi can do is lower the amount of lights I have on at a time. If everybody did that the carbon footprint will be lower and climate change will be less of a serious problem.

I thought about this a lot as well when I took the survey. Flights and transportation were the biggest factor for me too, but it's hard to understand exactly what to do since most of this is determined by my families behavior that I have less of a say in. Since certain actions aren't fully my decision to change, it's really important for me to find ways that I can lower my family's carbon footprint otherwise. This website attached below was really helpful in giving strategies that kids can implement when wanting to make a difference. While its intended audience is younger children, it's definitely applicable for anyone who doesn't have total agency around environmental decisions they take part in. Some of the ideas it offers include changing what type of light bulb your family uses, always turning off lights and electronics, using fans when you're hot, walk or ride your bike if you're able, or carpool! While these things feel small, they almost make me feel that until I'm my own independent, I can still make a bit of a difference.

the link I used above was https://climatekids.nasa.gov/how-to-help/

Lots of family households have a noteably high carbon footprint. lots of this carbon you are producing are from two things; food, and transportation. Specifically in my household the majority of our carbon footprint comes from the intake of different meats. Ideas to reduce this number could be making an effort to regularily eat more plant based meals during your week. Planning out your meals in advance so you know the ingredients you need and then making sure they are in your refrigerator. This will help reduce your carbon footprint signifigantly. Now, when it comes to transportation, families will drive to work or drive their kids to school on the daily. You can lessan your transportation numbers simply by biking or taking public transport to school/work. Or just plain old walking. You may say that you dont have time in the mornings to take public transit or walk, and that may be true on certain mornings. But saying that you also can make an effort to wake up earlier to catch the bus. This may require your bedtime to get earlier aswell. so you are still getting enough sleep. These are just a few things that can help reduce your carbon footprint; while also giving you insights on what causes your carbon footprint to be so high in the first place.

After calculating my carbon footprint, I realized the main contributor to my carbon footprint (9368 KGS) was my food (being around 5000 KGS). Other factors were lower than the average, since my family doesn't waste money on unnecessary new items and inform us to turn off any electronics we don't use. I also do live in a smaller house were I share a room, this would lower my carbon footprint since we are saving space. I also do take public transportation %70 percent of the time to get to and from school. There are some occasions I get a ride, but we don't live too far. One thing that was way out of the average though was our food consumption. We are a family of 6, we require more food and most of my siblings are in the teenage stage, growing kids require more food. Me, especially, this had made me reflect on my food consumption and my recycling practices. My family sometimes use disposable utensils and plates which I think we should cut back on and consume less snacks as a family to reduce our carbon footprint.

Personally, I don’t  want to change much about what we do, as there isn’t really much that we’d have to change, but there are some things that could be changed to lower our impact on the environment. The biggest thing that we could change would easily be our food consumption. We go on shopping sprees practically every week and eat outside every Thursday and Saturday. I feel it as kind of an addiction as we really don’t need to buy so much stuff every single week. Therefore, the main thing I would change about our actions is to not go out as much for food or resources unless we’d really need to. A way to do this would be to start a small vegetable garden, which we have already begun. For us, solar panels are a very expensive option, so there is a very slim chance that any part of our house, let alone all of it would be powered by solar panels. If it were possible, though, that would be a change I’m also willing to make. Our transportation and home kgs are lower than average otherwise.

Having your own home gives you freedom to be creative, to have your own systems within your home, and to essentially do what you want with it. Looking at my calculated home carbon footprint it definitely could be lower. One big factor that could be worked on is the location by home is and since I have to drive to school everyday, the distance between home and school effects how much carbon footprint I’m contributing to. If I could change this I would move a lot closer to school to prevent that, if that wasn’t possible even taking things like the bus would also be a lot better.
Where you get your food is also a huge deal. If possible making a little garden or even just buying groceries locally could help shave down carbon footprint. On top of that taking little steps to notice if I’m not using electricity in the moment to turn it off or when I’m using water to make sure I turn the faucet off when not being used too.

My own personal house design would be energy efficient by use of motion sensor lights, low flow toilets and showers. I would use solar to power my house. I would live near my school so there would be little carbon emissions on my commute to school. I would buy organic food that is locally sourced to support agriculture in California. These revisions should bring my family's carbon footprint now. I would also address my biggest carbon waste, travel. I would travel less and not as far to reduce that section.

When I calculated my carbon footprint(4,727 kg), I was very surprised to find out that even though my footprint was one of the lowest in the class, a little over half of my total carbon footprint was home related. It made me realize how simple steps like turning off the light when you leave a room, or shortening time in the shower could make a positive impact on my carbon footprint.

After closely looking into my carbon footprint, I realized that the carbon footprint that I had was very low compared to the average in my area, my carbon footprint was 6,933 kgs, but the average was some 9,000 kgs. I realized the biggest thing that was affecting my carbon footprint was my traveling. Although I thought I didn't travel that much ( I traveled only two times the past year), surprisingly it was the biggest intake of my carbon footprint. my transportation came out to 3,749 kgs, which to my surprise was astonishing if i say the least. However, my lowest was definitely the purchases, which came out to 353 Kgs. My Home kgs was roughly 1629 kgs, which was also weird, but then my food was roughly at 1,203 kgs. Apparently The amount you're supposed to have is only 1000, which was the most surprising, because no one had anything under 4000 in my class. In conclusion, this survey allowed me to see how much we could cut down on our energy consumption throughout all aspects of our life, especially in our home life.

Whenever my family wants to get somewhere, walking or biking is always our first choice. If we want to go get dinner somewhere, there are many places within walking or biking distance. Exercise is also a factor, as walking somewhere is better for you and the environment.

Another way my family saves energy is by taking trains if we need to go far, we have taken only 2 planes in 15 years. Some days I ride in the car to school with my brother on the way up to one of my parents' work, this means we drop off my brother, then me, and then my mom or dad drives to work. This is a really efficient way of getting to two schools and a workplace. Another way we get to school is by taking the bus, which produces 33% lower greenhouse gasses per passenger mile than a car, and is a little more fun

My family has also developed a habit of turning things that we don’t need in the moment off In the summer, we run the air conditioner in the morning when it’s cold and it keeps the house warm for the rest of the day, as opposed to running the air conditioner for the entire day and having the same result. If it gets really hot we can just walk down to the river and swim for a bit there. Even when we shower or brush our teeth we save by turning off the water when it’s not needed.

I hope this helps anyone who wants to know how to save energy and reduce their carbon footprint, as it has certainly helped me.

https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.d … ge2010.pdf

After completing the survey provided by this site for school, I discovered something weird. My family's purchase and transport footprint is lower than the average, but our home footprint is MUCH higher than the average. Our purchase footprint is shallow, resting at only 425 kgs which surprised me due to the quantity of clothing and technology we buy. In addition, our transport footprint was only slightly lower than the average (personal transport) standing at 3,655 kgs. But the real kicker was our home footprint. Standing at an astonishing 4,769 kgs, I realized how much energy we use/waste. I live in a single-family home with 3 others, so naturally, our energy consumption would be high. However, after answering all the questions, I realized we simply have too much stuff. 91 LED lightbulbs, natural gas heating for our water and home (for 7 months a year!) and air conditioning running for around 4 months a year during the summer; we truly do use a LOT of energy! In conclusion, this survey allowed me to see how much we could cut down on our energy consumption throughout all aspects of our life, especially in our home life.

This assignment has led to a great revelation as to how much is used/wasted! One thing I do personally is not put all the bulbs in a light fixture; as they sometimes hold more than one! I currently have a chandelier fixture in my dining room with 14 bulb placements, however, I currently only have the top part (three) placed with bulbs. It makes the room a little dimmer, but still provides light to be able to see. Maybe try unplugging a few around your house! This experience puts into perspective how little things can add up to conserve a lot!

My mother always harped on us for leaving the lights on in the room while we were not in there; As I have now do with my children! Small instances such as shutting off the water while brushing your teeth aid in the conservation of consumption of water. Riding a bike versus taking the car, or even carpooling helps eliminate the CO2 emissions into the air. It takes being aware of the little things that one can do to minimize their footprint. How do you get people to care?  "Research in psychology offers clues as to why people engage in
unsustainable behaviors despite their concern about the broader consequences," is a quote from a study done by
Christie Manning, PhD, on "The Psychology of Sustainable Behavior."
Here is the website that includes her research:
https://www.pca.state.mn.us/sites/defau … ee1-01.pdf

My mother always harped on us for leaving the lights on in the room while we were not in there; As I have now do with my children! Small instances such as shutting off the water while brushing your teeth aid in the conservation of consumption of water. Riding a bike versus taking the car, or even carpooling helps eliminate the CO2 emissions into the air. It takes being aware of the little things that one can do to minimize their footprint. How do you get people to care?  "Research in psychology offers clues as to why people engage in
unsustainable behaviors despite their concern about the broader consequences," is a quote from a study done by
Christie Manning, PhD, on "The Psychology of Sustainable Behavior."
Here is the website that includes her research:
https://www.pca.state.mn.us/sites/defau … ee1-01.pdf

My carbon foot print was extremely high because this summer my family took a huge vacation, which we have never done before. I dismissed it as a one time thing, and that it wasn't that big of a deal, until I realized that maybe 10 other people have thought the same thing. Then I started wondering about ways to have more environmentally friendly modes of long distance travel. Thoughts?

My family has a footprint less than half of the average size. I was surprised because I went on 2 flights this year but because I walk everywhere it offset its self. My house is also new so all of my lights are LED and all of my heat and stuff is electric

One thing I can do better to help planet earth is buy using electric cars or more environmentally healthy forms of transportation. Electric cars will help the world severely because you are cutting carbon emissions almost all the way down. Or at least using a hybrid to help with cutting the co2 emissions in half.

Another way I can help is carpooling to school and sports I have friends that I do school and sports with if we carpool often that will take away one car which is a day worth of co2 away just by carpooling. And if other people not only in my school but across America can do it too we can make the roads less populated and cut co2 emissions like crazy.

I agree, carpooling or using electric cars would cut down carbon emissions

My family's carbon footprint was a little less than double the average. I will work on making it smaller.

for home and food my carbon footprint was fairly low, but when it came to transportation, it was twice the average.

I didn't realize how high my family footprint would be. We drive to places multiple times a day and my dad watches T.V. Even little things like leaving the water on or forgetting to turn off a light have a big effect on the carbon that is in the air.

Yeah it really makes you think how much impact your actions and the actions of your whole family have on the world and how the easy choices you could make could have a positive impact

I was surprised to see that my family's footprint is actually a lot higher than I expected it to be. I believe that the reason for this is that we travel a lot by car or even by plane. Since it is spring time and we live in a small city, we could use our bikes more or even walk  if we need to go somewhere not that far away. We never leave the lights or water on if we don't need them and we always try to consume more bio food in our daily routine.

I was also surprised to see how high my family's footprint was. Traveling by car contributes to a lot of the footprint which is why my family also has agreed to use bikes or walk when our destination isn't too far.

When discussing how to reduce carbon levels between us, it's important to do research on our own homes first. From calculating 4,424 kgs in my own residence, it was important for me to form new methods for my carbon output. We can start with light and its input within the house. First off, the best way to reduce the light input is just to remember switching them off when you leave the room or aren't in need of them. Additionally, an effective alternative to the standard light bulb, are LED lights. These lights are much more environmentally friendly because they last longer, and are easier to recycle. LED lights use 75% less power and last 25 times longer, LED lights will advance our home's light efficiency for the better.  A very common strategy of today is the change to solar panels. Solar panels are a great way to reduce carbon emissions. When PV cells within solar panels capture the sun’s electromagnetic radiation, the energy is able to transmit power into the house with drastic carbon reduction. Another way of paring electricity in the house is unplugging devices. Many people leave their phones and tablets charging for hours on end, without even needing to charge. If you can learn to unplug when it’s not necessary much energy can be saved. Gardening is also a positive way of lowering CO2. Many plants photosynthesize, breaking down carbon molecules in the atmosphere. Home-grown fruits and vegetables can supply your family with luscious greens, lowering the need to administer fossil fuels from your vehicles when grocery shopping. You can also try and enjoy colder showers. When using hot water for long periods of time, much carbon is being proceeded into the atmosphere. If you feel up to it colder showers will help, alongside trying to take shorter ones. You should consider using the AC and heater less. When heating just one home 6,400 pounds of CO2 can be produced. We as humans need to help our earth in many ways and these are small steps each house hold can take.

Sources:

https://www.nps.gov/pore/learn/nature/c … n_home.htm

https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/solar … production.

https://www.nwf.org/Our-Work/Environmental-Threats/Climate-Change/Greenhouse-Gases/Gardening-for-Climate-Change#:~:text=Plant%20lots%20of%20trees%20to%20absorb%20carbon%20dioxide.&text=If%20every%20one%20of%20America's,tons%20of%20CO2%20each%20year.

https://unitil.com/blog/electronics-unplug-save-energy#:~:text=Unplugging%20devices%20when%20they're,you%20turn%20them%20back%20on.

After recently taking a questionnaire to help assist my knowledge of how much I and my family put carbon footprints out into the world, I knew I needed a change. After receiving my results (20,056) and knowing the average in the US (16,000) I personally (although it's gonna be very hard) will now be more cautious of how much carbon dioxide I put out into the world, and what harm it could cause.
First of all, there are many changes I could make to improve my house to make it more environmentally friendly. For example, my family and I have been previously talking about purchasing solar panels to reduce carbon emissions and to reduce the electricity bill, who doesn't like saving money on their bills? Carbon emissions cause the planet to warm up which is why we are experiencing climate change because activities have raised the atmosphere's carbon dioxide content by 50% in less than 200 years. As Constellation, Houston Habitat for Humanity states, "The more we can capture the benefits of solar energy, the less we will rely on fossil fuels. Adding a solar energy system to your home allows you to tap into these solar energy advantages: Solar energy can reduce your home’s electricity bill, Solar energy is a renewable energy source and reduces carbon emissions, Solar power can get you money back through Solar Renewable Energy Credits." This is just stating the benefits we can receive from buying solar panels for our homes.
Sources: https://www.constellation.com/energy-10 … -cons.html.
Lastly, my family and I have recently been involved with gardening/planting many plants in our front/backyard to provide vegetation and to contain CO2 from leaving back into the atmosphere. CO2 in the atmosphere has many poor cons for our planet, too much CO2 can cause the climate change incident that is occurring to this day and forward. All this climate change causes forest fires, heat waves, sea level rise, and more. Although it takes time to grow your own food, it's all worth it in the end because you have fresh fruit/vegetables that also help make our world healthier. According to the College of Illinois, "Vegetable gardens benefit the environment in many ways. Locally grown vegetables reduce carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels. No plastic packaging is required when you harvest vegetables straight from the garden, which also reduces fossil fuel inputs. Pesticide and other chemical inputs can be much less in a small, well-tended garden than even a small farm." This shows all the different ways growing your own produce isn't only beneficial to yourself, but also to the environment and our planet. Source: https://extension.illinois.edu/blogs/il … all%20farm.

Thanks

My total Carbon Footprint is 13,985 kgs. I knew my footprint was going to be higher than the average. My highest footprint was home. I think it was home because I usually have on the air conditioning on a lot in the heat and my heater on in the cold, I use a lot of water, and sometimes I have/leave the light on a lot. My second highest was Transportation, I think it was transportation because I drive around a lot. To make my carbon footprint go down, I should do less of what I do right now. If I want my home footprint to go down I should start using less water, ALWAYS turn off lights when i'm not in the room, use a lot of blankets when it's cold instead of the heater, and stop wearing long and heavy clothes when it's hot. For Transportation I could carpool more instead of driving separate so much, I could also walk more. Lastly, to lower my purchases I could stop buying so many new things, start brining my own paper and plastic bags to stores. The celebrity with the highest carbon footprint is Taylor swift with the footprint of 8,293. I really want to try to make my carbon footprint go down and I will try really hard to.
https://greenly.earth/en-us/blog/ecolog … elebrities

My Carbon Footprint is 9,175. This is under the average. My highest area of emissions are home with a total of 3,870.  I feel my emissions are this high because I play a lot of video games and have many things plugged in because of it. Also in the rest of the house different lights are turned on in the same room. This is the leading cause of my Carbon Footprint. If I unplugged and powered things of all the way in the house especially electronics and other devices the emissions would decrease exponentially. According to the New York Times you can lower your emissions by "Turn off appliances at the power outlet to reduce even more energy. Putting them to sleep is second best." The new york times gives a example of a very good way to lower your footprint is by unplugging things and making sure there turned of all the way when not in use. https://www.nytimes.com/guides/year-of- … -footprint

Another area that I have a high Carbon Footprint in is Transportation with a total of 3,886. This is partially high because I don't live close nor far from school. I take the bus some days but drive more then other days. If I started to take the bus more and started to carpool with my neighbors who go to the same school as me I could expenitionally lower my emissions. Also when I hang out I skate around where i'm going but I do drive a good amount. If I took the bus more and started carpools when I am out with my friends I could lower my emissions and my friends emissions. According to EPA "Carpool with friends instead of driving alone." Is a top way to lower your Carbon Footprint. In conclusions there is many things in my daily life I can do to be more environmentally friendly. How will you lower your Carbon Footprint ?
https://www.epa.gov/transportation-air- … hicles-and

After calculating my carbon footprint, which includes data from my general family life, I got a footprint of 8,927 kilograms, which is only around 1,000 kilograms less than the average carbon footprint of 9,727 kgs. From the data presented, the sections I had the highest footprints in were the home, with 6,569 kilograms, food, 1,383 kilograms and transportation, 587 kilograms. Some of the main reasons behind why my home's footprint was so high were my family's constant over-usage of our electric heater, artificial/electric lighting, and warm sink/tap water. In order to reduce our carbon dioxide usage with the electric heater, we can set our thermostat to lower and install heat recovery ventilators, which will provide ventilation for the house, transferring the heat from the air outside to the air inside, creating a warm and fresh temperature inside the house. Also, in order to reduce the amount of CO2 released from the artificial/electric lighting used in my family's home, we could switch our incandescent light bulbs, which waste 90 percent of their energy as heat to LED lights, which use only a fourth of that energy and last much longer, meaning that instead having to throw out the unsustainable incandescent lights and buy more of them, we'd have lights that are safer for the environment, reduce carbon dioxide emissions and last longer. Another, less effective, but affordable way we could reduce the carbon dioxide production from our incandescent light bulbs is by simply keeping them off whenever they're not needed or when a room is not being occupied. To reduce the carbon dioxide produced and emitted from electric warm or hot water usage, my family could turn our home water heater down to around 150 Fahrenheit which will save 550 lbs of carbon dioxide a year. Overall, we could do an energy audit of our home to learn about and establish ways we can save energy and become more energy efficient. Additionally, one way my family can reduce our footprint with food is by composting our food more. I noticed that my family actually never composts and usually just puts all of our food in the trash after being consumed and this is one of the reasons why our carbon footprint with food is so high. Lastly, although a reduction of my family's carbon footprint with transportation can be more difficult because I don't have my own car yet, we could carpool together or all travel in one car instead of separately driving the two cars my family owns. Carpooling is a much simpler and more convenient way to travel, and along with this annually saves 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide. We, specifically I, could try to take public transportation more often, like the bus or the BART train. This should help me get to the places I want to get to easier and quicker as well as save the carbon that would be been wasted if I traveled in different individual cars. In conclusion, although my family's carbon footprint isn't exceedingly over the average carbon footprint, there are many different actions that we could partake in the future that could help reduce our footprint to a much more sustainable amount, helping us to create a healthier and equitable lifestyle for ourselves and for the Earth.

Source: https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2018/ … footprint/

I am very glad that I participated in the project because I finally found out about my family's carbon consumption. The information really surprised me, I didn't think we were actually consuming so much carbon. Now when I know about it, I can reduce my consumption in various ways.

After calculating my carbon footprint for the home section which is higher than the average at 5,273 kgs, I knew that I needed to make changes on the way I am living at home. If I could have my own home there would be some changes I would make.

First, I would want to stay in California because we have great weather and I would want to install solar panels so that they can convert the sunlight into electrical energy which would be a source of electricity that could help reduce the amount of CO2 I am using. According to Suntuity Solar, "By switching to solar-powered energy, you can drastically reduce your household's carbon footprint, which is the total greenhouse gas emissions caused by your home." Also, according to berkley.edu, "A residential solar panel system, for example, has the capability of providing for the electricity needs of an entire home with about 80% lower carbon emissions than fossil fuels." https://nature.berkeley.edu/classes/es1 … M_2013.pdf
https://suntuitysolar.com/suntuityblog/ … our%20home.

Secondly, I would want to have my own garden so that I can grow my own fruits and vegetables to be sustainable and not have to go buy groceries and save money. Growing my own garden also promotes good eating habits and exercise habits as well as family bonding and stress relief. According to Washington State University, "The carbon-rich humus in fertile soils keeps carbon out of the atmosphere for many years. Better management of our soils can capture and remove 21 percent of annual greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S." Also according to lbl.gov, "Plants, through photosynthesis, and soils sequester roughly a third of carbon dioxide emissions released into the atmosphere each decade from the burning of fossil fuels." https://extension.wsu.edu/king/tip-shee … can%20help. https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2021/12/08/p … il%20fuels.

Lastly, I would want to live close to my school so I can walk and not waste CO2 by driving and wasting unnecessary gas. Right now I live kind of far from my school and I am wasting a lot of gas and using a lot of CO2 every day by driving to school and I want to reduce that by living closer to school. Also walking instead of driving is better for you because that is a form of exercise and is healthy for the body rather than just sitting in a car while you are driving. According to The Daily Californian, "Walking instead of driving means that you're contributing less to climate change. Of course, when you're walking more you also need more fuel for your body through food and water and food production can also contribute to greenhouse gas emissions." Also, according to Blue and Green Tomorrow, "Walking is the best way to help the environment. One study concluded that walking a mile and a half would release 75% less greenhouse gases than we would produce from driving the same distance. Driving less doesn't just help the environment. It can also make us healthier." https://dailycal.org/2021/04/26/stop-dr … u-can-walk. https://blueandgreentomorrow.com/enviro … 0healthier.

I am going to start practicing these things to help reduce my carbon footprint and you can too! There are also many different ways and things that you can do to reduce your carbon footprint not only at home but with food, transportation, etc. What are some things or ways that can help you reduce your carbon footprint?

My carbon footprint was 19774 kgs per year. This is on the high side of the median range for my region. I'm not surprised that I fall in the higher category given the greenhouse gases that my family and I emit into the environment. A few factors that I believe make my carbon footprint higher is that I commute a total of 1 hour to/from school each day and sometimes more due to practices. In order to lower this I could make up for this by riding my bike or walking in my hometown. My carbon footprint is also effected by the appliances in our home. This would change and lower if we switched to solar power or made sure we unplugged things, turned off lights and water when they're not in use. In order to lower my carbon footprint as well as my families it's important to be conscientious about our choices and make sure we prioritize the change where we can.

When calculating my carbon footprint which was lower than average, I noticed that one part was higher, transportation. This surprised me because I take the bus to school and walk to close places often. What actually made that so high was because of air travel. My family and I normally go out of the USA once a year but I did not know how much travel and air travel. My carbon footprint is significantly increased by travel, especially air travel. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that transportation causes around 24% of the world's CO2 emissions, with aircraft playing a significant role. As much CO2 emissions as the typical human emits in a year may be produced by a single long-haul trip. Carbon emissions are also a result of the energy needed to build and maintain aviation infrastructure, including airports and aircraft.
Some, however, can take action to lessen the carbon footprint of their trip. For instance, choosing environmentally friendly transportation options like trains or buses, if you are not traveling over water, can cut CO2 emissions. Additionally, avoiding connecting flights in favor of direct flights and flying economy instead of business or first class helps lessen the environmental impact of air travel. Additionally and most importantly, several airlines provide carbon offset programs enabling customers to finance environmental initiatives that lower carbon emissions to make up for their travel-related emissions.
https://www.iea.org/reports/co2-emissio … ights-2021
https://www.unep.org/resources/report/g … t-aviation

After calculating my carbon footprint and seeing how high the total was for my home (3,757 kg), I knew that I needed to make some changes to the way that I live. If I could have my own environmentally friendly house, there are many different design choices that I would make.
Firstly, I would want all of the electricity to come from solar panels. I live in California so the fear that I wouldn't get enough sunlight to power my home is non-existent. The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy found that" As a renewable source of power, solar energy has an important role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating climate change, which is critical to protecting humans, wildlife, and ecosystems. Solar energy can also improve air quality and reduce water use from energy production." This is why I would make this choice for my future family and my future home.https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/solar-energy-wildlife-and-environment#:~:text=As%20a%20renewable%20source%20of,water%20use%20from%20energy%20production.

The second decision that I would make when planning out my environmentally friendly lifestyle in my new home would be to choose sustainable ways to get my produce. Organic food might be more expensive but in the long run, it is better for your body as well as the environment. Non-Organic foods are grown with pesticides that hurt the wildlife and the soil. As the British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture states, "Runoff from areas treated with pesticides can pollute streams, ponds, lakes, and wells. Pesticide residues in surface water can harm plants and animals and contaminate groundwater." https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/farmi … icides.pdf

Lastly, I would make sure that my home is close to the facilities that I frequent the most. I currently live 5 minutes away from my school(when driving) which reduces my carbon footprint. I am still young so I won't be making big life changes any time soon but I know that there are small choices that I can make to improve my footprint! I have started composting in my backyard and I also use my space heater less during the night. We were all placed on this earth by God and it is our job to take care of it. What are some ways that you can lessen your carbon footprint?

My family produces less carbon dioxide than average in our country but is still more that the rest of the world. I think that me and my family need to watch out on food waste because we produce the most carbon dioxide by that.

Personally as part of a big family sometimes our carbon footprint can be overwhelming and above average. It's important to at least try and reduce it, if we as a society ignore our family's carbon footprint then global warming will just keep on increasing. One of the world's main priorities should be conserving the planet for future generations. We have already started this journey by inventing tools such as solar power and hydroelectric turbines but we shouldn't stop. I believe that big or small we can change the world by working together and supporting each other along the way. Even if this journey will be long it's for the best cause of all.
A healthy planet we can call home.

I would like to state that my carbon footprint results are lower than the average in my area. This doesn't mean my whole family shares the same results, I like to think I'm more sustainable than them. As a person that's from the younger generations, I tend to care more about the environment and I participate in little things that my parents usually ignore, for an example I always turn the lights off when I walk out of a room, I don't keep the windows open if we are using heat inside the house and others. When talking about my results, the highest carbon rate is connected with home and the amount of trash we throw out. My conclusion is that my carbon footprint is smaller than my parents footprint, most of my carbon footprint comes from having a big waste of trash, but I'd like to proudly add that my waste when talking about gasoline and vehicles is minimal, because I mostly walk everywhere.

I liked answering the questions from the carbon footprint questionnaire. it was interesting and very helpful. thanks to the questionnaire, I realized how much carbon dioxide my family produces, and thanks to the discussions during the courses, I was able to find out ways to reduce this footprint and improve life.

I believe that my families footprint is lower then average

This Wednesday I have used The International Student Footprint Calculator in order to find out what my family's impact is on the environment.
   I was glad to know that it is around the average in my location, but I was surprised to see that while my footprint for food, purchases and transportation is lower by a small percentage, the home category rises it by a fair amount, which I didn't think of before.
   I concluded that I have to lower the temperature I usually set in my home during cold times and to switch to LED lights for a better quality of our planet and that home utilities play a major role in environmental issues.

Yes,also my footprint food,purchases and transportation is lower,but the home category is higher and I didn't think of before either.Home,I use woods to heat my room and this activity has a harmful impact on the environment.

Am aflat cât de mult am poluat în ultimul timp,şi am învăţat lucruri noi.

My family's footprint is above than an average carbon footprint for Croatia. My parents and my siblings are well environmentally conscious, but we are a family of 6 so all of our expanses are higher than an average. The most of CO2 is coming from home and transportation. My house is quite big and then we need a lot of light bulbs, energy to heat the rooms, hot water etc. Although we use LED light bulbs, the amount of power is still significant. We live on the countryside, but we are very near to the town where the extracurricular activities of my siblings, supermarkets and shops are,... Beacuse of that we are not driving to many kilometers in one way, but we are often going there and back few times a day. Flying by a plane is the big factor in the segment "Transportation" because we love to travel.

I would like to Know my family footprint

Good for you

I think that my family’s carbon footprint is quite large but we are familiar with the carbon footprint. For example we use LED bulbs and recyle. We like to travel, that’s one of the reasons why our footprint is above avarage, most CO2 comes from traveling.

I don't think that my family footprint is that bad. The most of the CO2 comes from traveling. We could improve that by walking more or by riding the bike. And also we should replace all incandescent bulbs with LED bulbs.

Me and my family consume a lot of electricity: the light, TV and computer are often on.  I would therefore like to try to ensure that we reduce our consumption by setting limits, in particular for the light that we leave on a little too often when the natural light is good enough to see.

I agree that natural light is good and probably the best but I think that you could use LED bulbs. I have that type od bulbs in all od rooms in my house and they are really good.

When I compare all my results, I see that my family spends the most carbon on transportation. Perhaps this could be reduced if we used bicycles for sports activities instead of cars.

My familys footprint wasnt bad until i filled out the questions   about travel.We dont travel with a car a lot but we do travel with a plane.I believe we should travel with planes, cars and other vehicles less because they are destroying earth.Instead we should walk more.

In my opinion, reducing CO2 in the atmosphere can be done in many ways.  First of all, we can only use LED bulbs instead of filament bulbs that release heat energy.  And now this method is a little more financially demanding, but if we set aside a little money every month, we can buy solar panels and convert it into thermal energy instead of using gas or wood, because burning these products creates a lot of CO2.  Short trips like from home to the store can be done by riding a bicycle instead of starting the car, which releases a lot of CO2 through exhaust gases.

I think that my family can use less co2 like, for example, we use less water, buy less new clothes and reduce waste.  We can also use the car less and ride a bike or walk more.

I think that my familiy's carbon
footprint is not bad, but it can be even better, we are awere of the carbon footprint problem, we wanna be much as sustainable as possible.

I think that my family's carbon footprint is quite large, but I think that we are quite familiar with the carbon footprint and that we try to reduce it as much as possible in different ways, such as: food composting, we use LED lamps, we don't use a lot of water when showering, we try to implement as much time outdoors...

I think that my family is very aware of our carbon footprint and we are trying to use and do things that have low carbon footprint. For example we use LED bulbs, recycle, we grow out own food, recycle our scrap food etc. Even though we are careful, we really like to travel. We travel often, that's why our footprint is above the avarage.

I learned that my family could do more to be mindful of its impact on the world and can help make a change in the world's health.

You need to choose well where you will live according to your career and your hobbies ! Effectively, transports represent a large part of the pollution.
For example, I live in French Polynesia with my family and even if we only fly once a year, it is always at least 8.000 km by plane (back and forth counted) and for my oral exams, I will have to go to France by plane (at 16.000km). And in the future, I would like to travel several times a year. So, when I leave home, I will settle in a place that makes travel accessible because of shorter distances and therefore less emissions from transport. But if you prefer a sedentary life like my parents, going to live on an island seems like a good choice !

Awareness and action is our role in this society. Let's act for ourselves and our future.

On the spectrum of carbon footprints, I would categorize my family as somewhere in the middle. Though we have many environmentally friendly habits, there are definitely categories that we could change our behavior in. We compost all our scrap food and make a conscious effort to eat locally and organically. My Mom recently purchased an electric hybrid which contributes significantly in reducing our carbon footprint and my Dad is hoping to purchase a fully electric car in the near future. We heat our home with wood that is hand chopped on our property, although we keep our home in the high 70s to 80s in the winter months. We also practice small sustainable habits such as using reusable bags, donating our old clothes to places such as goodwill, and buying clothes of high quality. Though we are aware of our carbon footprint and make efforts to reduce it, we also frequently travel. In the past year, we’ve visited Florida, Montreal (twice), Saratoga, NYC, Boston, Rhode Island, Morocco, and Virginia. We also travel quite frequently on the weekends and midweek for sports as I participate in Soccer, Nordic Skiing, and Track and my younger brothers also play multiple sports. These habits play a significant role in raising our carbon footprint which is something I would like to work on improving.

Excellent points Siena! In my family we work very hard to reduce pour carbon footprint as much as possible but in the past few years we have struggled with that. I participated in a baseball team that required an intense amount of travel each weekend for about 5 months. Selfishly I always liked taking my moms vehicle which didn’t get nearly as good gas mileage as my dads hybrid does. My moms car tends to average 37 MPG while my dads averages a whopping 72. By deciding to take my moms car every weekend instead of my dads it seriously affected the amount of green house gasses I put into the atmosphere which I now regret. I also participate in a travel soccer league that like baseball requires me to sometimes travel multiple hours each weekend. When I have to do this traveling I plan on now mainly sing my dads vehicle as much as possible considering how environmentally friendly it is. Although I now wish I used my dads vehicle more in many other ways our family does a great job reducing our carbon footprint. In the winter we keep our house at a chilly 68 degrees and we try to use a very little amount of heat. In the the warmer months we only have on air conditioning for a few hours in the day and try to keep the house at 73 degrees. As a family that is juggling many other things we try our very best to reduce our carbon footprint and will continue to for many years to come.

I live in the Pacific so that we depend a lot on flights. I try to pay attention to other topic. Me and my family are trying to reduce our meat consumption and even to stop it. Instead of throwing clothes away we give them to families who need them in islands. We try to reduce our impact on the environment like before we used dryers and now we totally stop it. We plant and try consume local foods.

My parents have always loved to travel and like to take my brother and I to new places. We almost always take a plane to the destinations we go to, and planes are terrible for the environment. When Covid hit, my family couldn’t go on vacation for a while. This was super sad for us and we realized how important travel is. Because Of this I’ve noticed that people are always gonna travel, and we should try and help make the planes better for the environment. This might take awhile to design but it would really help fix the issue.

I completely agree with you about how planes emit too much carbon and how we need to make the more eco friendly. Hera are a couple of ideas of how they could be more efficient: we could make them electric an charge them with solar energy, we could try and make them glide more instead of relying on engine for the whole flight, and we could maybe even make subways under the ocean far into the future. But we can also just try to limit our plane use. For example, if you were to fly to Europe but you wanted to go got different countries, you should take trains.

I agree with both of you! It’s hard to balance a love of traveling with environmental concerns as both are important. Liam, you raise a good point that it’s unreasonable to ask people to give up traveling as it’s something many people enjoy. Realistically, people are not going to stop traveling which is why environmentally conscious transportation means should be developed. Graham also raises a great point that there are other options to traveling by plane that are more environmentally friendly such as trains and communal busses. While these can often be overlooked as they bear the stigma of being slow and unpleasant, technology is actively being developed to combat these associations. Bullet trains are nearly as fast as planes and have a considerably lower carbon footprint. Additionally, it is important to consider the environmental impact of your vacation plans.

I also agree with you, moreover for people like me who are living on an island, in the center of Pacific Ocean, it is difficult to not travel anymore: for example my family live in France and it is actually very important for me to go see them sometimes. However I think that we need to understand what travels are necessary or not and how can we travel in a more sustainable way because that is a fact, travelling a polluting too much. And that is why it so important to find solutions by investing in renewables energies such as hydrogen and overall to open the eyes of our new generations and educate everybody about the danger of too much carbon emissions.

My family loves to travel, from seeing new cultures to being able to feel tropical weather while it is still winter at home overall it is something my family cherishes. The idea of family vacations are great, I mean a break from school/work that you get to remember for the rest of your lives. For my family we try to go on at least one big vacation per year. It can be difficult at times planning trips around sports so for bigger vacations we usually go on planes since it is faster. Along with this we go to Philadelphia sometimes because my moms whole side of our family still lives there and we use to live there. When we travel there we usually drive, but instead I am going to encourage my family to take a bus down, so it is better for the environment because it is transporting more people and cutting down on individual burning of fossil fuels. If people transition to this for the main form of travel it can benefit our planet.

Hey, Olivia. I agree with your idea about wanting to shift to more eco-friendly modes of transportation. My family also travels a lot by car, and while this is the most direct route of transportation, it is not always the best for the environment. Buses are a good option because multiple people ride the bus at a time so it cuts down on individual carbon emissions. I know that there is a bus from Damariscotta to Boston that I have thought about taking to visit some of my family in Massachusetts. This is a good way to cut down on emissions especially for something with such a long distance. Because of this exercise I have become more aware of my carbon emissions and I will try to cut down on things like transportation emissions in the future.

In my family, we are very conscious of our carbon footprint. We compost, we have vehicles with very good gas mileage (and my grandmother has an electric car which she often picks me up in), we shut the heat, internet, and water at our camp through the months that we aren’t using it, and we do other small things such as shutting lights that aren’t in use and only running the dishwasher if it is full. When I was younger, I became very concious of my family’s carbon footprint and would make signs next to each light switch to remind everyone to shut the light off. I also sometimes took cold showers because I learned that hot showers negatively effect your carbon footprint. Although there isn’t one major thing that we do as a family, we are very concious and aware of our emissions.

Hi Mrs. Talty,

I’m thankful that you and your family are doing your best to keep your community safe. You are planning a very small roll in a big problem. I agree with your sustainability practices, as I myself practice some of these in my own home. There is always more we can do as well. A fun activity to do with your family is every time you use a plastic product and throw it alway drop some money in a jar. You can the put that money towards making your family’s house more sustainable or even saving up to make a purchase of an electric car. Thanks again for your sustainability efforts!

I would also remind my family to turn off lights. Another big process that encourage in my family is taking cold showers. In the morning, I take a quick and cold shower to wake me up, and it has many health benefits as well. It is good for your hair, skin, and respiratory system. My brother has now started taking cold showers because of me. Another thing that my family does is we use solar power. It gives us approximately 40% of our hot water, and it saves. A lot of emissions that a hot water heater would emit. I take more showers in the morning, because the hot water from the solar is available then. We also have. A hybrid Toyota Highlander. This saves emissions while creating a more noise-friendly environment for the animals and our neighbors. I also do a lot of these, and they are all helpful to saving our planet!

In my family, we do pretty well keeping the carbon footprint of our household on the lower side. We make sure to compost and recycle. We also turn off our lights as often as we can when we are not using them and turn them off when we leave the house. We also carpool to school and drive a car with a pretty good mileage per gallon. We also do not go on plane rides very often, which has a huge impact on someone’s carbon footprint. Although we heat our house about eight months out of the year, we use a wood stove and use wood scraps from my dad’s shop, instead of cutting down extra trees to use as firewood. We have an ac system, but we only use it rarely in the summer. Instead we have a few standing fans to keep our rooms cool at night. We also eat organic and try to buy locally as often as we can. When we shop for clothes, we prioritize quality over quantity and have a rule that we have to love what we are buying, or we won’t get it. We also frequently shop at secondhand stores for our clothing and donate old clothing to places like Goodwill. We also wash our clothes with warm water in an efficient washer. If I were to say one thing we could do to reduce our household carbon footprint, I suggest that we make a few small changes, such as how often we drive far distances.

Currently in my home that I share with my parents, our carbon footprint is most likely substantially less than other families in the US. We practice green policies like composting, recycling, hanging clothes out to dry, turning off appliances when not in use, etc. Like other families in Maine we also use a wood stove but what makes us different is that we burn wood from our very own property. Personally, I don’t purchase a lot of clothing and much like leona we follow the quality over quantity process in our family. . .which helps keep our carbon footprint to a minimum in that category. When I am an adult and own my home I don’t think I would do anything significantly different than my own parents do right now but I could live closer to the center of town and that way I wouldn’t have to travel by airplane as much, and that would also count towards living to local transit options so I could be more efficient in the transportation category. Right now we eat as locally as we can, and almost entirely organic so in the future I wouldn’t change anything about that either.

When it comes to carbon emissions my family isn’t the most aware but we do our best given the amount of knowledge that we have. We use a wood stove to heat our house in the winter, a wood stove was the best choice because we thought that it would last longer for its price and that it would be more efficient. When it comes to actually using this stove, we really only use it for a couple of months in the winter and even then, we only use it for a couple days a week, and for only around 4 hours a day. We understand the effects that using our wood stove for an extended period of time has so we decide to not use it until it gets really cold inside the house. We also garden because it is a fun activity to do in the summer and it can help reduce carbon emissions. We use 4 12ft by 3ft gardening boxes  nd 4 3ft by 3ft gardening boxes. We known that these gardening boxes don’t make up for all of the carbon that we produce but we are trying to do this little thing to help make up for as much as we can.

In my family, i think we are pretty conservative when it comes to putting carbon into our atmosphere. We have solar lights to light up our front path and we also compost. We use a company called Scrap Dogs to pick up our food scraps each week. We also have heart pumps which conserve energy as well. There are our main source of heating and cooling so that decreases my carbon footprint. Lastly, we also recycle. We make sure to recycle anything that needs to be recycled. The are some things that i feel we could also do better. Everyone in my family showers almost every day. Even if we take 5-10 minute showers, we are still using a lot of water. I can also also work on not buying as many new clothes. I’m sad to say but some of the brands i buy from are fast fashion brands. I need to work on buying from thrift stores more often and not buying from big name brands.

I o0ften leave lights on without noticing and that can Negatively impact the world.

I was surprised at how high my family's carbon footprint is. I thought we did a lot to stay environmentally friendly.  We recycle, compost, and try to conserve water and resources as much as we can. But, I figured out later on that the reason our carbon footprint was higher than I expected was because of transportation. We have 3 gas powered cars and zero electric cars which does a lot of damage to our environment.

I found out the same thing recently. We try our best to not use a lot of water, we don’t use the lights in our house except for at night, and we recycle. But I found out that our transportation footprint was much higher than everything else, from going to sports practices everyday and going on roadtrips throughout the year. We mainly travel by car and we only have gas powered cars and I didn’t realize how much carbon gas powered cars really create until just now.

This is a point that my family and I are struggling with as well. As I know my family doesn’t make the most environmentally friendly choices, I was unaware of how much carbon our choices were emitting. The most impacting section for my family and I’s carbon emissions was our travel, which was around 13,919 kgs. We traveled a lot by air in the past year, along with traveling a lot by car, to visit family. We are now aware of the impacts our travel has on our carbon footprint, and we plan on limiting travel, along with looking into that concept that regards paying to reduce carbon emissions on our flight. We were also emitting carbon through the fact that we heat with heating oil, rather than a more energy efficient alternative (Geothermal.) Further, we were purchasing things that had a lot of plastic both in the items and in the packaging, along with buying things that we didn’t truly need. We also each consume meat and dairy for about 3/4 of our meals, which was also very impacting.

Small changes my family and I have agreed upon to reduce our carbon footprint include: eating more locally grown and organic foods, omitting as much meat and dairy out of our diets as possible, make composting a part of our routines, replacing all lightbulbs to LEDs, converting our heating oil to a more energy efficient alternative, reducing how many purchases we make on unnecessary items, limiting our travel, and using reusable shopping bags to reduce how much plastic we use. We also plan on spreading the word to other families and friends, regarding ways that they can reduce their carbon footprint.

It is important to eat sustainable foods and avoid CO2 emissions by car, preferring the bike.

Það er mikilvægt að borða sjálfbæran mat og forðast CO2 losun með bíl, frekar en hjólið.

It is important to eat sustainable foods and avoid CO2 emissions by car, preferring the bike.

We have to reduce the use of the car for moving in our city, we can use the bike more for example

It might be hard to reduce your carbon footprint as a family but there are some easy steps you could take to live more sustainably. Biking is a good way to start. Biking is a sustainable, enjoyable, and rewarding mode of transportation that your family could start incorporating into their daily routine. For example, a family may decide to bike to school or work during certain seasons. Easy ways to reduce your carbon footprint in your family home are only running the dishwasher when it is completely full and making sure to turn the lights off when you leave a room. Investing in a water efficient toilet to help save water, or switching all your light bulbs to LEDs are some more difficult tasks, but that may help a lot. You could even start a garden in your front yard to have some fresh produce for dinner or switch to buying organic, locally grown produce.

I totally agree I think all of those are fantastic ways to decrease your families carbon footprint. Another thing that would help a lot is investing in an electric car. A lot of people think that it’s too big of a commitment or it’s too much money or even that it’s too inconvenient, when in realty that is incorrect. The government has many reword systems set in place so that if you transition to electric you get rebates which bring the price down. Adding to that, to get old cars that burn crazy amounts of fossil fuels off the road, the government also sends you money for trashing your old car and buying a new one, hopefully electric. Also, there are charging stations all over the city and in suburbs all across the world. Having an electric car doesn’t exclude you from being able to go on road trips. All that to say, moving forward it is a very good idea to look into getting an electric car as your new car especially if your car is getting old and doesn’t work properly.

When looking at my overall carbon footprint, I noticed that the main contributors to my carbon footprint were what I ate and the energy I use in my home. This is because in my family we use our heating system frequently and we also tend to keep our lights on for a long time. If I owned my own home I would use more blankets to keep me warm and only use the heating when it's very cold out . In the case of overusing light bulbs, I think that I can start turning of the lights when I don't need them right now. My family also incorporates a great deal of meat into our diet which is why if I had my own home I would try to find vegetarian options in place of meat, foods such as broccoli or asparagus.

My carbon footprint was lower than my country's average and it was pretty small, I did travel a lot this summer and that made my transportation portion to about 4000kg compared to 100kg and 200kg  in other areas. Seeing these numbers made me realize the effects of our actions and took in mind planing more carpool trips for me and friends when we get together since at least 100km of transportation was getting around to see them and do activities. I also took into mind was how people heat their homes and created conversation with my family to make changes about how we heat our home and my my own sort of difference with my carbon footprint and my family's. As far as purchases, my footprint was quite low and I don't see that changing soon. But I am glad that my school participated in this challenge as I see it as an opportunity to make a difference and always be aware of my footprint.

My families carbon footprint was about where I expected it to be. My family does a pretty good job of reducing our carbon footprint because we've been smart with our decisions about saving light and carpooling a lot of time for transportation. I only had about 7,700kgs of carbon per year, compared to the average 9,700. As I mentioned, I carpool and don't use up a lot of light. My house doesn't have very many lights, and I carpool to school almost every morning. On top of that, my Dad is a chef, so he is big on not wasting food and only taking what you're going to eat. From the website European Union, it says one of the best ways you can reduce your carbon footprint food wise is by consuming local and seasonal products and not eating to much meat, especially beef. I'd say in my family we are pretty good at that. If my family continues to do this, nothing huge will change but doing the little things can go a long way.
Source:
https://europa.eu/youth/get-involved/su … otprint_en

I agree with your family, by not wasting food, buying large amounts of meat products, saving energy, carpooling, and buying local products, this does help with reducing the amount of carbon emitted. Another way to reduce your carbon footprint is to reduce the number of clothes or the number of electronics bought, which takes a lot of energy to manufacture.

Some small things that could be done to keep a low carbon footprint are things like limiting the amount of times you turn the lights on, keeping your water use to a minimum, using public transportation instead of using a car, and purchasing second hand items. Clothing industries tend to use a lot of unnecessary packaging and need a lot of transportation to get to you. This process adds quite a bit of carbon into the atmosphere so instead of buying things brand new, you could go to a thrift store.

In the modern world we consume more and more, I think of my grandmother who reused the sliced paper to pack the meat, bought salt, sugar, spices using the same bags. It's a lifestyle. We use a lot of useless packaging that we trow away.

My carbon footprint is 3821 kg of CO2 per year, compared to an average of 6968 for my country and 3791 worldwide. I thought that my footprint would be higher for Spain and worldwide and surprisingly is lower than Spain’s average and higher than the worldwide average. However, it is still a lot of kilograms of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere. According to the notes below my carbon footprint, it says that to have a “globally sustainable” footprint level the average should be about 1000 kg per capita. Therefore, I should fix the mistakes that I make to lower my carbon footprint. Some things can be done to lower my levels such as not using so much the air conditioning or avoiding the use of cars and replacing them for going by foot.

I feel like your ideas to help lower your carbon footprint will be very effective. They were also very helpful for me because they inspired me in getting some ideas on how to lower my own carbon footprint, like avoiding the usage of heating.

Regarding my family's work on the carbon footprint, I think we could improve, being only 3 of us we don't pollute much, also because we only use a car and mainly the bike.
plus we have a wood-burning fireplace and solar panels.

I fully agree, I too with my family am trying to improve the situation of carbon our footprint. For now we are trying to use as much as possible less polluting vehicles

I know that if there are less members in a household, then it is more likely that their carbon footprint is lower than others. I think if it isn't possible to use a bike, maybe because of long distances, then an electric car would be an alternative option and it would be better than to continue using a typical gasoline-powered vehicle.

My family footprint can definitely be lowered as many of the things that my family uses on a daily basis can be eliminated or lowered. For example, our usage of electricity and water can definitely be lowered. Other things that factor to our carbon footprint can also be lowered because currently, no one in my family considers saving things as it has not been an issue to us (currently), which is definitely not true if we look into the future.

Something my family and I enjoy doing is traveling. However when we travel we release a lot of carbon footprint into the world. Should we travel less in order to reduce carbon footprint? However when looking at other people such as celebrities we can see that they take short private plane rides to get something as trivial as coffee so if my family were to reduce the amount we travel would it really make a difference?

Our carbon footprint is affected by everything we do in our daily lives. One thing that does affect our carbon footprint a lot if the type of food we eat. Some foods that increase our carbon footprint a lot include beef, cheese, dairy, chocolate, shrimp, coffee, rice, and so on. These foods are very common, but by reducing the amount of these that we digest can help decrease our carbon footprint by a lot.

I think we should turn off our lights and electronics when we leave for the day especially fans since they are not needed while we are at school.

When talking about reducing carbon footprint, it is important to know the definition and the cause of it. The definition of a carbon footprint is the measurement of the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that we have emitted by our actions and the main cause of a larger carbon footprint is the amount of energy needed for transportation, technology, food, manufacturing, etc. All of this information begs the question, how can we be more energy efficient? To reduce your family’s carbon footprint you should limit the amount of energy spent at home such as lights, ventilation, heat, etc. An example of this would be to turn off the lights when light is produced by the sun and only turn them on when needed. To become more energy efficient, use alternative energy such as solar panels and wind energy from SMUD or other clean energy companies. When thinking about the location you should be in a town or a small city to help with less transportation and try to live nearby important places, either work or school. When talking about the topic of food, it depends on the habits of an individual rather than the location. A more energy-sustaining food source would be a garden or a local farmers' market as it takes less energy to produce and time to find groceries

To your family's carbon footprint you can start off by reducing auto mileage, you can also try to incorporate more walking and biking as a family. Maintaining your vehicle on a regular basis

To your family's carbon footprint you can start off by reducing auto mileage, you can also try to incorporate more walking and biking as a family. Maintaining your vehicle on a regular basis

If I were in charge of my house, the ways I would make it more energy efficient would be to use solar panels and solar energy, grow whatever food I can, turn off lights and water when they are not in use, and use an electric car.

Many things that would improve our homes carbon footprint and our vehicles carbon footprint cost a lot of money. Most of the time it's not worth spending that much of our money just to improve the environment. If you want to get like an electric car that is a big investment just for the electric car especially if you just bought your other car or the car that you have is still working fine. Say you want to get the systems in your housing to become more efficient then you have to spend a ton of money to get rid of the system that is already in your house and then replace it with this new expensive one. Spending the time and money that it takes to become more efficient is not worth it to most people.

It is easy to look at the data for Americans' carbon footprints and say that its because all Americans are lazy and greedy(which we sometimes are), but our culture, corporations, and government make it very hard to reduce your carbon footprint. If you want to buy a sustainably made product, it can be hard to find and some companies will intentionally misinform you. It is also almost impossible to travel in America without a car and doing anything about your carbon footprint can be very expensive.

I Think that its really scary how all members of my family generate from 10kg to 15kg of carbon per year. That's an insanely high amount for just one person, especially annually. I wonder how much it would go down if we installed solar panels and flew on planes less as those would be very good ways to lower our carbon footprint. I also wonder how much the average carbon footprint would be lowered if everyone were to do the same.

I've always thought that my family was very eco friendly, and the carbon footprint proved that in all regard my family outputted less carbon than the average except in one case: Transportation. As it turns out, transportation is one of the largest emitters of carbon, and to fix that, we need to do something. Some things are already being done, such as having electric cars, but we also need to have other alternatives such as hydrogen. Hydrogen powered cars have shown much potential, and have even been available for commercial retail, but have never caught on. Why? Because hydrogen stations are simply not that available for most people. We have to add more hydrogen stations around the world, or other stations for alternatives to gas and diesel transportation. Along with that, governments and school districts to aim  to cut down on carbon emission with their fleets of transportation, and make public transportation available to all. According to PCMag, electrifying all school buses in the United States would lead to a reduction in carbon emissions up to 35%. Along with that, some districts don't offer busing to school, meaning that all students have to come in a car to school, which increases carbon footprints massively. We all need to work together to reduce carbon footprints nationally in order to preserve the environment and this planet we call home.

The majority of my carbon footprint comes from transportation, I live in an area that is pretty far away from any major shopping areas, restaurants, salons, etc, so my family is always driving pretty long distances to get wherever we need to go. I think there are two major changes that I would make in terms of the way my family lives. One thing we could do is simply move to an area that is closer to the places that we end up traveling to a lot, that way we wouldn't have to constantly be driving extremely far distances to get to the places we need to go. Another thing we could do instead of moving is to invest in electric cars. While they are extremely expensive, we would be using them extensively and reducing the negative impact we have on the planet!

I have the same issue. I have a lot of activities outside of school that require a lot of driving. Also, I am unable to drive myself yet, so my parents are making even more trips just to get me to and from places. Once I can drive myself, I will be able to reduce the mileage. Additionally, I hope to move somewhere that has more public transportation options and less distance between everything as an adult.

When I calculated my carbon footprint, what stuck out at me was that I left my fan on medium-high 24 hours a day, even while I was at school or outside the house in some other way. I just never thought about what it cost the planet to keep my fan running all day. Now I try to make an effort to reduce the speed and total time my fan is on. This is a simple change that I think my whole family could adopt easily.

Maybe to save energy, leaving your electronic things unplugged while not using them could save a lot, and besides, you don't need to keep everything in your house plugged in all day. Unplug your microwave, unplug your tv if you're not using it,unplug your lamps, etc.

Turn the lights off when you are about to leave your house or when you aren't in the room. There is no need to keep the lights on all the time

Since I was a little kid. I've been using personal transportation. My parents drop me off and pick me up from school almost every day. From the survey, I learned that my transportation use was way above average. Knowing this, it's time to make use of the different forms of transportation. Such as public transportation, carpooling, biking, etc.

I agree. I always knew that there were climate impacts of transportation, but I never realized just how serious they were.

Transportation is really needed for our family. To me i'd use public transportation  if my parents are busy so I use public transportation which is a school bus or Aiga Bus. This Survey is really good so we can learn to use public transportation by making different.

Transportation was a huge difference to my footprint. Does anybody know how I should make my transportation footprint smaller? It was mostly my home and school (distance) that was the problem (45 km).

Another question. How do I save more energy when taking a shower?

You should probably take the public transportation or drive a car but a few other people with you on the car. You can save more energy when taking a shower by turn off the running water when you don't need it. You can also shower faster. This way, we can save the world and reduce energy.

Very agreed

The way to decrease your carbon footprint is to take public transportation such as buses, or MRT. This is because many people taking one transportation is better than many people polluting the environment by driving cars.
If you like cars, drive an electric car.
The shower problem, is that you take a shower with cold water since heating up the water creates pollution if you use a gas powered heater. You could also spend less time in it.

Public transportation is very important to reduce your carbon footprint because it makes cars less and for one MRT or bus is equal to the pollution 1 car makes.

Electric cars. When I selected the option "I own an electric car" in the fuel efficiency question, my carbon footprint for that question decreased by more than half.

If there is no public transportation that can get you easily to school, maybe you could have a electric car, but producing it also makes lots of pollution. I think the fastest way is to move to a closer area even though that may be hard. You could also emit less pollution by avoiding traffic jams because we don't stop the car and the car still has air-con inside and is using fuel.

Still, walking saves the most energy because both electric cars and public transportation less or much still use energy. It also uses lots of energy to make those stuff. Walking to school can save a lot of energy. So, if your destination isn't too far away, just walk there.

We can get EV cars instead of fuel powered cars. EVs are better because they are green and also, better for the environment.

If I had my own house that I can control I will put solar panel on top of my house. I would also use less AC.

For my carbon footprint challenge, my transportation had the most and, I would want our family to change to a eletronic car. Because some electronic cars use solar panels to give electricity, so it will save the environment from getting polluted.

I need to increase walking or biking but I need to go to school everyday. I need to travel 14km to school everyday so my carbon footprint is bigger.

Mine is 34km everyday just to go to school.

I definitely agree. My Carbon Footprint was about 5,000 Co2 emissions a year but when I added how long it takes me to go to school everyday, which is 44 km, it went to 10,000 Co2 emissions a year. So I should find a more environmentally friendly way to come to school.

Work with your family to make habits of turning off the lights, the TV, and any other electronic when they are not in use

I think we can all do this

we can also use new technology like led light bulbs to help conserve energy.

I agree. If everyone can make these things a habit in their daily lives it would have a big impact on climate change and could influence people to switch to a greener lifestyle.

Yeah me to I think that if others could change we should be able to change our lifestyles too!

Yes I agree. That adds a lot of our electricity that we are use. We should get used to turning off the lighs and  when devices and our battery when we dont use them. Because it says that we consume about two-thirds of the roughly 100 quads (quadrillion Btu) of energy each year witch is a lot and some of the electricty comes from us leaving ligths on and other devices when there not at use.

We can also get light bulls that comsume less energy. We can also have a reasonable time when we shower.

Walk more

or we could take bus which reduces lots of car or we could ride the subway or the MRT

We should use public transportation instead of a lot of cars.

true

bike also

We could ride the bike instead of the car.

My family is not really aware of the environmental issue even though we are literally on an island, which means that we are easily affected by it ( through the raising water...). However, we try our best to respect nature. We compost, recycle as much as possible, compost almost everything... So, it shows that it is possible for a family to act spontaniously eco-friendly. It is only a matter of education and habits.
Some tips:
You can recycle your plastic bottle into flower pot, collect the rain to water your plants, compost egg shell and vegetable peel...

I totally agree with you !
Step by step we can really have a better behaviour for environment.

When youre not using a room turn off the lights. Theres no point girlie

I would have a house in Europe so I could use public transportation instead of driving. I would also have my house be small and fully solar powered. I would also bike as many places as possible to avoid crowded trains and buses. I would keep my lights off whenever I didn't need them

This is difficult to do, but would help a lot

big energy plants should switch from burning coal and oil for energy to having solar panels, because in the long run it's a more profitable idea.

If I had my own home I would take steps toward a greener climate by limiting shower times, turning off lights when I'm not using them, and having natural light in my home. I would also have solar panels as my source of electricity. Although it takes money to do some of these things you can also do a lot of these things on your own.

Showeting wastes water and is bad for the evrionemnt, stop showering and the world will be good again

The solution to that wouldn't be to stop showering completely, but to lower the time that you do shower. I usually take 10-15 minute showers like most people, but if we all lowered our shower time to 5 minutes that would be beneficial towards the environment. 

I dunno about you but I have no idea how you take 5 minute showers.

While I agree that showering for extended periods of time wastes water, not showering at all is unhygienic and socially unacceptable. Instead of not showering, maybe people should just not waste their time in the shower and only take 10 minute showers.

Wasting water really is bad, but being unhygienic also is. So please continue to take showers and try to lower the time you take them. (Try at least somewhere near 10 minutes or try to periodically lower the time it takes for you to shower.) Try not to use bathtubs since they use up so much water, and don't forget to turn off the tap when you're done (or using soap).

This is not true. There is a certain standard of hygiene that people need to follow and it would overall leave the world cleaner. I think the solution is to take shorter showers and only taking them when dirty. Also if there was a system where the water could turn cold after 7 minutes or less to limit comfort.

I agree that showering wastes a lot of water, but it would be really bad if you didn't shower at all, instead maybe lower the amount of time that a person is in the shower for.

Yes, wasting water is bad for the environment, but I wouldn't consider taking a short shower as wasting water.

Thought your idea has meaning to it, I would still suggest using less time to shower because hygiene is important but your idea is good.

L+Ratio you are all dirty fucks I be showering for 20+ minutes at a time
Dont be a cuckold shower long + Ratio

I do not really agree with this, because taking a 5 to 10-minute shower each day will not affect the environment that bad, and it is much more important to be clean than to have a bad environment. According to https://impactful.ninja/long-showers-en … 0emissions. taking excessively long showers is bad for the environment because of water pollution, and lots of energy consumption which leads to carbon dioxide pollution in the air. In conclusion, I think that showers if taken for the right amount of time don't really account for your carbon footprint but excessively long showers will have a greater effect on your carbon footprint.

I do not agree with this whole heartedly. I think it is good to reduce your time in the shower and the amount you shower but it is not plausible to ask people to stop showering all together. Showering for 5-10 minutes is resonable and doesn't use up too much water. This is something we all need to work on.

Honestly if you want to save water here, It all depends on how responsible you choose to be and if you're willing to commit to "5-10 mins" Like the person above has said. But you have to think most people are unwilling to do this. We all love our hot showers at night you know,But that is a mistake. It's out of laziness and lack of care that we still have problems with water. If ya'll wanna really do something, Fill a bucket up with water and use it to shower.

Just shower less

If I had my own home I would right off the bat try to buy things that are energy efficient like LED lighting and a composter things like that. I would get my electricity from solar panels. It would be here in California. Probably work. I would get it from a small business to help out.

In total my carbon footprint is 5700, it's not too much but I still think it could be improved to help the environment. I could achieve this by having the least number of lights on and only using them for something necessary, using the same method with water, that is, using as little water as possible, also when shopping, you should only buy what you need and not buy things that you are not going to use, or we could also, for example, consume less meat and consume more local foods.

I agree with you. Other methods to reduce the footprint would be to use less means of transport, use reusable bags, avoid buying bottled water, that is reduce, reuse and recycle.

You could lower your carbon footprint by simply buying less things, the more you have the more items you need to buy to replace/fix/upgrade that first thing you bought, stop consuming unnecessary items you don't need, and if you need 24 hour service, you can call this local professional, however, just by consuming less you are contributing to lower carbon emissions.

You could lower your carbon footprint by simply buying less things, the more you have the more items you need to buy to replace/fix/upgrade that first thing you bought, stop consuming unnecessary items you don't need, and if you need 24 hour service, you can call this local professional, however, just by consuming less you are contributing to lower carbon emissions.

My Carbon footprint count was a lot higher than I expected. Most of my carbon footprint emissions can be from transportation and My house. I notice there are a lot of simple ways to reduce my carbon footprint. Some way to reduce carbon emissions in my house is to reduce my electricity use so turning off the lights as I leave rooms and, and reducing heater, fan, and AC use. You can also unplug electronics that aren't in use. A few ways I can reduce my transportation carbon emissions are to use public transportation when possible, try to carpool, Use ride-sharing services and you should try to bike and walk more. Just by doing these simple things, I would reduce my carbon emissions by a lot. by doing these I would have a small impact on changing the world.

My carbon footprint was a lot higher than I had expected also. The majority of my carbon footprint emissions was from transportation and consuming food. This was a surprise to me because I didn't expect my footprint to be as high as it was. My family eats a lot of food but I didn't know this would make my carbon footprint increase the way it did. When looking at my carbon footprint, I noticed simple ways to reduce my carbon use at home and in my daily life. One way is using my family's electric car more often. Using a car that consumes gas, will affect the environment and cause climate change. I have an electric car that charges at home and utilizing this car more often will help the environment and my carbon footprint. Another way is not throwing out as much food at home. My family and I make a lot of food at home and we also consume a lot of food too. The more we cook, the more my carbon footprint increases because of the grill outside and our kitchen using power inside. My carbon footprint was a lot higher than I expected but if I practice these ways I just explained

My family is not always very aware of the carbon footprint we leave. In an ideal household, I would carpool often, grow a lot of my own food, eat healthily, save electricity, and much more. However, I feel like families need to be aware of the carbon they let into the atmosphere, and I would like to start with my own family. I carpool with my sister to school every day and try my best to save electricity, but I believe I could do much more.

After tracking my carbon footprint, I assumed that my high number was due to living in a large family. I believed that because there were more people in my house, my family would be consuming more, thus increasing our footprint. Upon further thought though, I realized that since we all shared a single house, my family used the same power, tools, appliances, etc., causing the carbon footprint per person to be less than it would if one were living alone. Of course, living with multiple people is not nearly enough of an effort to say I am reducing my carbon footprint. Some steps my family must take to reduce our footprint are five minute showers, buying less food, and turning off lights when they are not needed/saving power in general. Once we are able to meet these goals, my family will be much more efficient and eco friendly.

After calculating my carbon footprint, I saw that traveling and driving took up more than half of my carbon footprint. I was around 7,000 which was lower than the average of 9,000 in my region but it still made me realize how much transportation takes and how much it contributes to harming the earth.

My family, has been trying to reduce our carbon footprint for a while. The first thing we did was get solar panels. Solar panels are used to store energy from the sun which causes a house to use less energy from sources that add to your carbon footprint. By using solar panels our carbon footprint has reduced a lot, but there are still many ways I can reduce it even more. Another way I reduced my carbon footprint is by buying more foods from my local farmers market instead of buying from grocery stores that use many more fossil fuels to ship and distribute their products.

There are many simple ways to reduce our carbon footprints. three simple ways is by taking shorter showers. this not only help save water but helps with green house gases going out when using the water heater. the second is by carpooling. this will help instead of taking public transportation or driving by yourself. switching to electric cars can also be helpful to global warming. the last way is to eat less meat. for my family this will be difficult since most of our food requires meat such as tacos, tamals, and pozole which are foods we eat frequently. one last way to save energy and to reduce our footprint would be to shut off lights when were not in the house or in the room. this will also help with your electrical bill! Overall there can be many simple and easy ways to help reduce global warming and are carbon footprint if we just put a little effort into it.

even though my family runs off of solar, has electric cars, eats not too much meat, and doesn't run our gas heating often our carbon footprint is ridiculous. We travel about once a year and that alone has raised our carbon footprint my almost 5000kg. According to ourworldindata.org domestic flights have the highest carbon footprint even above deiseal cars.

After completing the Carbon Footprint Calculator, I was shocked to see that my carbon footprint was significantly higher than the average in my area. I thought to myself how can I reduce my carbon footprint? My largest category was in the food section, so I researched how I can reduce my carbon footprint through food. The results I found were incredibly helpful. According to europa.eu, I can lower my carbon footprint in a variety of ways. The one that stood out to me the most was lowering my consumption of red meat. When filling out my calculator I realized just how much red meat, beef in particular that I consume on a weekly basis. Through my research, I found that limiting my consumption of red meat makes a large impact on my carbon footprint. Due to these results, I have set a goal of limiting my red meat consumption to once a week. If I can accomplish this goal I can make a positive impact on my carbon footprint. Furthermore, I am already in a carpool and I wish to continue using it as much as possible so that I can limit my carbon footprint as much as possible when it comes to transportation.

My foot print is 8,824 total, my home is 4,249, my food is 2,559, my purchases is 523, my transportation is 1,492 this is my footprint.

Hi, I'm from Spain.
My total footprint is 4,336 kgs. My footprint is lower comparated with oter families of Spain.
My home is 1,538 kgs, my food is 2,063 kgs, my purchases is 322 kgs an dmy transportation is 414 kgs because I normaly walk.

Hello, my name is Carolina, i'm from Spain. My carbon footprints is 7,978 total, i want to improve it charging less the mobile phone or don't take so long to shower.   
Nice to meet you Dylan.

hello my name is Carla.I´m from Spain. I live in a very small town. I think my carbon footprint is too high to live in a town. My carbon footprint is 10,370kg in total.
At home 2,800kg. In food 6,128kg.
In purchases 407kg and in transportation 1,035kg.
I am going to try to change some habits so that my carbon footprint is lower.

Hello my name is Clara, my total footprint is 4,722 kgs. And it is lower comparated with other families in France. My home energy is 657 kgs and I think it's pretty much. My food is 1,563 kgs, my purchases is 70 kgs and my transportation is 2,431 kgs and it's too much.

Hii my name is Nil and my total carbon footprint is 3.462kg, comparated to my school my total is lower than the average.
At home : 949kg
Food : 1.160kg
Purchases : 154kg
Transportation : 1.199kg
Iam trying to reduce my transport carbon footprint but I can't because I take the school bus everyday (the morning, the afternoon and the evening), but I do carpooling sometimes !

Hi, my name is Claire, and my total footprint is 9609 kgs, which is about 100 kgs less than the average footprint in my region. I would make my home more energy efficient by getting my electricity from solar panels. By using solar panels, I would be able to save a lot more money monthly. According to Project Sunroof, a Google project, assuming my monthly electric bill is $90, I would save 99 dollars monthly and $13,000 over 20 years. I would live in a pretty sunny area so that the solar panels could work efficiently. I would also like to live in the city. That way I would live closer to shops/stores, my workplace, and or a transportation station so that I can walk or use a method of transportation that is better for the Earth. My family buys organic food, so I would continue to purchase that from the grocery store since it is more beneficial for the environment. According to the SFGate, 80% of Americans' protein comes from meat, which is unhealthy environmentally. I would try to buy less meat and more non-meat proteins, like nuts, eggs, seeds, beans, tofu, etc.

Project Sunroof - Savings estimator
Healthy Meat Serving Size Per Day (sfgate.com)

My family could buy an electric car and maybe plant some god damn trees.

Hi, I´m a student from Spain. My total footprint is 6411 kg, around 500kg less than the average in Spain. I produce 846 g at home, 3606 kg with food, 371 kg in purchases, and 1885 kg in transportation. I think I should eat less meat to lower my carbon footprint because meat contaminates a lot, and I should buy more 0 km clothes and food.

Hi, I'm a student from France. My total footprint is 7663kg, in the average in France. I produce 2849 kg at home, 2872 kg with food, 196 kg in purchases, and 1746 kg in transportation. You shouldn't eat less meat but buy more local and organic food. In France we have a lot of  diverse products and several farms are organic.

My total footprint is 5,496 kgs of CO2 per year, compared to an average of 6,968 kgs for Spain, and 3,791 kg (= 8,358 lbs) worldwide. Is less than the average of people.

I can reduce my carbon footprint walking to my curricular activites, buying less things and buying local food

Hii my name is Nil and my total carbon footprint is 3.462kg, comparated to my school my total is lower than the average.
At home : 949kg
Food : 1.160kg
Purchases : 154kg
Transportation : 1.199kg
Iam trying to reduce my transport carbon footprint but I can't because I take the school bus everyday (the morning, the afternoon and the evening), but I do carpooling sometimes !

My total carbon footprint is 13,486 kgs, with the largest category of mine being transportation. I found my high amount for transportation to make sense, as I am constantly driving to the gym or a sports event. I also took a trip across the country on a plane this year, and drove across the country last year, so those trips added a substantial amount to the number

Hii my name is Nil and my total carbon footprint is 3.462kg, comparated to my school my total is lower than the average.
At home : 949kg
Food : 1.160kg
Purchases : 154kg
Transportation : 1.199kg
Iam trying to reduce my transport carbon footprint but I can't because I take the school bus everyday (the morning, the afternoon and the evening), but I do carpooling sometimes !

Hello, I am a student from Spain. My total carbon footprint is 4,310kg per year and I am below the average for Spain. I produce 2,365kg in my house, 1,734kg in food, 159g in clothes and 51g in transport. All this is because I almost always walk to places, I always eat homemade food and some of the food I eat is from my grandfather's garden. I also recycle and reuse as much as possible.

Hiii, I am Nil and I am a student from France. My total carbon footprint is 3.462kg per year and it is lower than my school average. I produce 949kg in my house, 1.160kg in food, 154kg in purchases (clothes...) and 1.199kg in transport because I take a lot of common transports. I eat very local and I do carpooling sometimes, and in my home we don't use a lot of energy ! Goodbye <3

My carbon footprint is about 19,603. My highest contributing factors are home and transportation. Transportation being an area of concern makes sense because I play on multiple travel sports teams and am constantly driving one distances to different tournaments and games. The only thing i can really do about this to try and reduce my footprint is to try and carpool as much as possible with my team mates so were not burning more fossil fuels then nessecary. I think in my home is the category that needs the most improvements as it is an older house so it takes more energy to heat. Also i think my family and i could do a much better job of monitoring our our electricity use and making sure to turn of lights as much as possible.

by our energy control, but there are many decisions we make every day related to our footprints that we might not be aware of. Being mindful of the transportation methods

If I were to design a more energy-efficient home First I would have a house with outlets and electricity that had sensors so when I left they would turn off and when I enter they turn on then I would have fans that were on a timer and turned off when the timer was off then I would have reusable water bottles ,bags and containers. Lastly, I would install solar panels on the roof.

Hello, I am a student from Spain.
My fotprint is 3,824. My carbon footprint is less than I expected.
I think that to improve it I have to fill fewer garbage bags per week.

Hi, I'm a student from Spain. My house carbon footprint is 2,061 kg, my food carbon footptint is 2,413 kg, my purchases footprint are 326 kg, my transportation footprint is 326 kg. My total carbon footprint is 5,949 kgs. What do you think about my carbon footprint?
To reduce your carbon footprint you can go more in bike or walk, close the lights when you are not in home and things like that...
For improve my carbon footprint i can stop using so many electronic devices and close the lights when im not in one room.

Hi, I'm a student of Spain. My footprint is less than I thought. In my family there are 4 people and the total emission of carbon in my family are 3,327 kg.I think that to reduce the footprint is necesary to recycle and not use enegy when it's not necesary.It´s also better to use cars only when it's necesary.

My carbon footprint is different that I thought it would be. It's 3.699, because I almost don´t use transport (I live very near to the highschool), and I live in a small city.To reduce it, I can try to use less the heating system or the air conditioning, use less the electronic gadgets (read in paper instead of in digital, not charge too much my phone,etc)and buy food that hasn't got plastic package.What about you?

In my house we live 3 people and the we produce 1,507kgs.
I think the key is to recycle, reduce and try to give the mostuse to the things before we get rid of them.

Unplug nonessential appliances when not in use.

eat less meat and more vegetables

take less the car or public transport and travel on foot or in vehicles that do not need fuel

Eating less meat and adding other non-meat proteins in your diet will help with both the environment and your health. I really like your idea and it is in fact very smart.

Take advantage of the sunlight. No use fan, open Windows. Close the water. Recyle more

What's your family's carbon footprint and how can you lower it? There are many ways some simple and some more drastic. Simple ways are like turning of the lights every time you leave a room if you don't already or turning of the water when you are brushing your teeth and not using it. More drastic ways are like not traveling to other places or not eating out every day. What are some other methods you can think of?

The highest contributor to my and my family’s carbon footprint is travel. My mom works from home but my dad, brother, and I all take a car to school or work. We also normally fly to Florida every summer.

If I were to have my own home in the future, I would be sure to use energy-efficient methods to maintain it. I would obtain my electricity from solar panels, and my house would preferably be near my school/workplace in order for me to use my bike as a method of transportation. If possible, I'd like most of my food to come from a home garden, but of course, grocery stores would still be the main source.

Hopefully I will have my own home in the future. I’d like to install solar panels as they are a pollution-free energy source. I would also like to live close to my work in order to reduce the time that I am driving. If possible, I would bike/walk to work. If my home had a backyard, I would plant a garden and grow vegetables and fruit.

My biggest contribution to my carbon footprint is transportation. I think if my family used a carpool to save as many miles as possible, it would affect my footprint greatly.

If you also used public transportation such as busses or trains you could also minimize your carbon footprint while traveling.

Great idea. To further diminish your Carbon Footprint, you could invest in buying a bike, skateboard or scooter and use that as your source of transportation. Public transportation such as buses or the metro could be a good idea too.

I agree with both of these ideas. You can find alternate methods of transportation as mentioned, such as public transportation, or carpooling. You can also try to limit the number of miles you drive, by making sure your destinations are important and you aren't making unnecessary trips (by combining errands). Walking, biking and running are great alternatives.

One thing that my family, and many others can do to reduce their carbon footprint is to cut down on, or completely cut out their usage and consumption of plastic. As of recent, plastics used for packaging and coating are showing to have very negative effects on the human body, more specifically organ health and reproductive health. As most people know, plastic waste also contributes to a mass percentage of the world's pollution, specifically that in the sea. In fact, there is an entire collection of trash (mostly plastic) that has come together as a result of the tides, and it bigger than the state of Texas. I believe that if the population stopped buying single use and non-repurposable plastics, like toys or products with packaging, we could significantly cut down our general waste production and lower our carbon footprints.

I agree that decreasing plastic consumption would definitely be beneficial as 60-95% of the pollution in the ocean is comprised of plastic debris. Plastic has become one of the cheapest, most accessible resources in terms of manufacturing mass amounts of products and because of that is difficult to avoid. Ideally, people could buy more reusable items such as metal water bottles, reusable bags, and other repurposable tools to use in everyday life. However, for some people buying re-usable items is an extra cost many can't afford and will continue to purchase plastic goods and products with plastic due to its low cost and accessibility. I think it's important that we push for companies, the producers of plastic goods, to be held accountable for their plastic waste and disposal of waste in any way possible and encourage carbon offset programs.

While i do hope to ya know not die to global warming and or not destroy the earth for my friends future children, at this current state of bieng a little guy I dont know what i can do. Eco-friendly products tend to be really expensive and its almost impossible to convince my parent, if i do it rarley sticks. Im not sure if we even have enough time to make a diffrence but i can't do anything now. so what do we as children do?

why are uyo asking me?? im just a little guyy! broo im broke

yea i totally get that, im also just a kid and the little definitely things do count. i understand not being able to do much about this but i promise there are a lot of people out there who are doing their best.

My family is very forgetful. We try to reduce the amount of carbon that we create, but every time we try to change our ways, we just forget everything and go back to our bad habits. This has been a really big problem. If someone is trying to reduce the amount of carbon in their family, try to reduce it little by little. Buy a little less food, try walking to the store every other day, and before you know it, you’re gonna be reducing your carbon footprint.

Spell "stun seed" backwards if you really want the solution.

My family footprint is above average on both food and transportation (13,381 Kgs). The only problem that I never thought about is that obviously humans need to eat but my family is a family of five, meaning this will be difficult to reduce the Kgs of my family footprint. I have the same problem with transportation. My family has to constantly drive to different areas, like to stores, work, or soccer practices/games. I’ve been looking through some of the posts here and I saw some talking about importance of carpooling and other stuff and I would like to give some sort of solution to this sort of problem but I can’t. This might mean that a lot of people around the world might be dealing with this type of issue and this will just increase concentration of greenhouse gases.

My carbon footprint for food is a bit higher than the average. If I did have more control over the food. I would bring reusable bags when shopping for food. I would also go to more local food markets either walking or using public transportation. I would also eat less meat.

This is a good idea! Because of the amount of greenhouse gases that meat and animal farms emit, limiting meat consumption helps the environment a lot, and lowers your carbon footprint

There is so much food waste that goes on in america. Just remember take what you will eat and then you can go back for seconds.

Yes, my carbon footprint is 24,000. I travel a lot, and I mean a lot, plus we use our heating and cooling a lot so that adds to the total. But mainly it is the transportation. My transportation on a normal year (without covid) would be about 27,000kgs. That is transportation alone. This time it was 13,000 because of covid. But there is no way to lessen this because I am not going to just stop traveling because of this data...

If I were you, I'd definitely cut down on travelling. That's just my opinion.

Why would I cut down on traveling, I love traveling, on top of that i drive 100 miles a week to school and back...

I go on like 3 vacations every year, so my transportation is usually extremely high. This year I was unable to go on vacations due to COVID, so my transportation is lower than it probably would be.

stop travelling

Sorry, I'll just fly on my magic carpet over to all of my competitions and vacations from now on

honestly i respect your want for travels but if you could cut down a few even like two, it'll eventually add up to not releasing so many greenhouse gasses. Another thing would be not using your main heating and cooling unit and using individual cooling/heating units in the rooms that you'll use. (:

Just invent teleportation

If you would want to keep traveling but also be wary of your carbon footprint then you should cut back on other technical uses and trying to compost as much as you can. But I guess you can also fly on your magic carpet.

I understand that you appretate travelling.I do too mostly. Covid has derceased your foot print but it is still pretty high. If you could travel a bit less and use different types of transportaion then that would decrease your carbon foot print.

I was shocked when I realized I drive 100 miles a week just to school and back. I think if there were actual subways like in DC then it would be much better.

Overall my family drinks a lot of liquid each day, especially water, so therefore we use lots of plastic bottles. In our kitchen under the basin, we have a big trash box in which we throw squashed up water bottles after every use. In a few weeks, we take them to recycling centers so they can be reused for a better good.

That's Great! A lot of people just don't care and throw everything in the bin but its good you have a seperate bin for the recycling. I have that as well We have three recycling bins. 1 for recycle, 1 for plastic bottles, and 1 for cans.

Yes, my carbon footprint is 24,000. I travel a lot, and I mean a lot, plus we use our heating and cooling a lot so that adds to the total. But mainly it is the transportation. My transportation on a normal year (without covid) would be about 27,000kgs. That is transportation alone. This time it was 13,000 because of covid. But there is no way to lessen this because I am not going to just stop traveling because of this data...

THATS A LOTTT!!!! Just don't travel as much or use and alternate method that creates less harm to our planet. hi graeme ;0

THATS A LOTTT!!!! Just don't travel as much or use and alternate method that creates less harm to our planet. hi graeme ;0

No! I like traveling... plus you live 5 minutes from school, i live 20 minutes from school... that is 100 miles per week for me to go just to school

My Carbon footprint is not that bad. I feel we did very good for a 4 person family. It was only 12,445kg. The biggest in my carbon footprint is our food. There are 3 boys in my family and we all eat A LOT. We will not stop will not stop getting and eating that much food because we need it and we eat all of it. We do plan on getting a compost for the remains of vegetables and stuff. We grow our own food every year and mulch and stuff is good for gardens.

If you have a high carbon footprint youre sussy baka impostor, cut off your electricity and go to jungle and live with nmonkey

Living with monkeys certainly is a more eco-friendly lifestyle.

I want live with nmonkey

reject humanity, return to amogus

Nmonkeys are the ecological future of Earth.

If I knew life was gonna be like this I would have returned to MONKE!

I was very surprised when I saw that my carbon footprint was a little over 7000. Although, I still think it's a very low score. The two places I had the highest numbers were home and transportation. I think I can reduce it by maybe using public transportation when going out with friends or even use my bike. This was very eye-opening to me, but I would like to know what you think? Do you have any better ideas? Let me know. big_smile

Same with me, my highest one was home. For me it was leaving the lights on and having a 5-10 minute shower almost everyday. After I saw my carbon footprint above average for home I imminently started showering for less than 5 minutes. I also have been turning off the lights, especially if I'm not in the room. I've also been reminding my family to do this to. I really want to change the future because I want to have a good future as well as my kids if I have any. We need to act now. In my opinion I think we need to get our footprints below 6000 in total. I think you should consider doing the same.

I wish I could get my footprint that low. It's inspiring that you both have low scores and are trying to lower them further. My family lives 30 minutes away from school and don't have an eco-friendly car, so transportation was my highest amount at a whopping 3943 kgs. The average for my region is 2557, so this is something I want to find a way around. Whenever I'm only traveling short distances I'm making an effort to walk or bike, especially since public transportation seems a bit unsafe during covid in my area, but until we have money for a better car it feels like there's not much else I can do.

One thing that would help reduce your transportation would be to organize a carpool with some friends, or as you mentioned using public transport, although I wouldn't recommend because of Covid. If you know how to or if the place you want to go is within reasonable distance, then yeah I would recommend try using your bike more. Hope this helped

It was not until we had done this project that I realized how much driving me and my family partake in. We drive wherever we want whenever we want, not thinking about how that effects our earth. Sometimes, a lot of the times, these drives are insignificant and could have been avoided. I feel as though we need to think about how much this is effecting the environment and what we could do to reduce the amount of driving we do.

Off the bat, the first thing I noticed how much the transportation section affected our footprint. We took 2 trips via plane , and I was surprised by how much that added to our carbon footprint. I think our footprint would definitely improved if we didn’t travel as far or with plane as often. I also noted how our home took up less energy because we utilized our solar panels as much as we could.

I believe my families footprint might not be as low as mine, because they do love to eat more meat then I do, I come from a meat eating family but I´ve never really enjoyed it. Our family footprint would definitely be low, but we subconsciously reduce, reuse, and recycle a lot, and we take care of our ecosystem very much. Our house uses solar panels, and we never use plastic water bottles and always only reusable water bottles, we have electric cars meaning no diesel or gas to harm the planet, and we only really overuse electricity, not things that harm earth.

I realized that my carbon footprint, specifically in the home  category, is something I could improve on. Mine is 2998 kgs, 759 kgs lower than my region’s average. However, we often have fans and the AC running a lot over summer,  often overnight. This is partially because it’s ridiculously hot, but also because we neglect to turn it off or lower it once it’s decent since the cool air is nice. If we were to make sure to turn things down more often we could probably make a decent difference. We could probably also find more eco-friendly appliances online somewhere.

My family footprint is pretty average, as we try to be as eco-friendly as we can, but we fall short in some areas. We recycle plastic often and use electric vehicles to go and from school, but the area we need to improve most on is what type of food we eat. In an ideal world, if I wanted to reduce as much carbon emissions as we possibly could, we would have to live within walking distance within our school, use all electric vehicles, eat more locally sourced foods, etc. Unfortunately, we can't just easily change some of these things in our day to day life, but we'll do as much as we can to reduce our carbon footprint.

My family footprint seems quite messed up. My family likes shopping, travelling, and a lot of other things that cost a lot of money. I personally don't really care for shopping or travelling too much unless I have to. IF I need an item, I'll get it. I don't buy things impulsively often. For travel, my family likes travelling way too much. My parents want to visit my sister in college once every three weeks, when she lives multiple hours away. This carbon footprint could be greatly lowered if we didn't also travel to places that require an airplane twice a year on top of going to my sisters college. My family's carbon footprint could definitely be lowered, but making that change would be the hard part for them.

When it comes to carbon footprint everybit helps. Eating vegan however is a way to decrease your carbon footprint a significant amount. But eating vegan isn’t for everyone so is there a way around that? Yes! Eating vegan even just for two or three days a week will help your carbon footprint reduce. Along with this, while reusable non single use plastic items might be more expensive, they can actually be cheaper in the long run. With single use items you have to keep buying while with reusable you can reuse them, also reducing your carbon footprint. While these items can’t be accessed by everyone, those with the resources should take advantage of it.

Me and my family live in Iceland. There our houses are heated by natural heat in the earth so we don't need much or any electric heating. Electric cars are getting more popular and we own one. Before that we had a mixed metan and fuel car so it has been important to us for a long time to think about the environment. Because of covid we haven't been travelling a lot so our footprint has not been large the last two years. I think we are doing a good job but we can always do better. The plan is to spare water and electricity more than we have and just go up from here:)

That's awesome. I've heard that Iceland has made a lot of bounds in reducing carbon footprint and have read news articles about the gaseous earth heating/cooling system.

I hope more countries start to implement natural methods like that.

My family has a large carbon footprint, which is a thing we have to work on.

I agree with you 100%, Me and my family have an average/high carbon amount that we could definitely work on. For instance, how I primarily heat my house with gas or fuel oil made my co2 numbers go up the most for "home". That is something my family could definitely work on. My parents both have different temperature preferences so I find the heat or air conditioning is always on. Another thing is transportation. My transportation numbers were pretty high and I would like to work on it. I'm always going out far every week for sports, but I drive to school. so I am hoping to walk more to school/ take public transit. My food numbers were pretty good. I try to cut out meat for a few meals every week, but my parents (mostly my dad) rely on meat. I think a lot of families also primarily rely on meat. For some families it might be hard to cut out meat as vegetarian/organic options can be more expensive and less accessible so it is unrealistic for everyone to stop eating meat. I think we all have things to work on with our CO2 numbers as no one is perfect, But if we all work hard I think we can lower all our carbon footprints collectively.

I was very surprised when I saw that my carboon footprint was a little over 7000. Although, I still think it's a very low score. The two places I had the highest numbers were home and transportation. I think I can reduce it by maybe using public transportation when going out with friends or even use my bike. This was very eye-opening to me, but I would like to know what you think? Do you have any better ideas? Let me know.

My household carbon footprint was around the score I predicted. I think the thing that made it rise the most was our household appliances and the things that we eat regularly in a week. Some things that were good that brought it down was reusing plastic and brown bags from the stores. Also, carpooling to Odowd every week will lower your carbon footprint. Since I live farther away from Odowd I am not able to bike or walk to school. So carpooling is a good method to lower my Carbon Footprint. Some things we can do to lower our footprint even more is to save water. We can do this by using a two sided flusher toilet which we have in all bathrooms. Whichever you go you can flush with more or less water. We can also do this by collecting some of the water from the shower and using it to water plants and use it in the dogs water bowl.

Yes!! I love the idea with the two sided flusher toilet and collecting water, I think the thing that would also help would be for an  example replacing your regular light bulbs with led light bulbs, it may be a small detail, but it can surely make a huge difference!

My carbon footprint was about the same as I had predicted. I think one think that definitely increased my carbon footprint was that I had a larger carbon footprint in the Food and Home categories. One reason for this is the amount of meals we have at home. My parents try to make as many healthy meals for my brother and I as possible but that could have an impact on my carbon footprint because of the foods we eat. We eat a lot of meat in my household which could have a major impact on my carbon footprint. Also, one big thing that impacts my carbon footprint is the amount of time my family uses our electronic devices. We have been using our devices a lot more in the past year because of our work/ learn from school routines. Also, one thing that we have noticed that we are trying to get better at is leaving lights on around the house. We have a bad habit of leaving lights on when we leave rooms which can largely affect my carbon footprint because they can get left on for hours at a time.

When I took the survey I was expecting my result to be average. I also thought it might be lower because I don't watch much Tv or get in the car very often. When I do go to school I take the bus or carpool. Taking the bus and carpooling reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Taking the survey helped me remember even little things I can do to cut my footprint like turning off the water when not in use, and turning off lights and electronics when I leave the room. Another way I know could help is informing the other people in my household how they can do better and cut their carbon footprint.

I was not surprised by my high carbon footprint result. I spend a lot of time online and using electronics so I expected to see a high score for that. However, the survey helped me realize that I should cut back on the amount of time I spend using electronics. During the lockdown times, my internet usage time has gone up by a lot. Despite this, I can combat it by cutting down on the amount of time I spend on my computer or phone while I'm not doing work. In addition to this, I can cut back on the time I spend using my heater or air conditioner. Thanks to my survey results, I now know that I can limit my contributions to the world's carbon release.

Several things can contribute to a relatively low carbon footprint. A modest simple life leads to less energy consumption along the various tools and gadgets technological process. Then a focus on learning and stoking the flame of curiosity detours one from vanity and actually towards being creative/productive. Then there’s of course greed and planned obsolescence. The warming of the planet is entirely a natural process but the levels of carbon dioxide driving it now are quite clearly human caused. Some global warming is almost definitely caused by humans, but some of it is also definitely caused by natural processes. Almost all climate scientists agree that humans have contributed to global warming. But there is also widespread agreement that the warming seen in the first half of the 20th century was mostly not caused by us. I find all of this entirely believable, since it rests on fairly solid science as far as I can see. To put it in perspective, temperatures are thought to have increased by an average of about one degree over the past century or so, with some places warming more and others warming less or actually cooling. Temperatures in any individual place have also tended to fluctuate by much more than this from year to year, up and down. If we learn how to lessen our carbon footprint at home and continue to educate others, we can still make an impact on slowing global warming down.

My family can reduce our footprint by unplugging unused devices, taking public transportation to work and school, taking shorter showers and never leaving the water running, eating leftovers, and not using our wood fireplace. Every family has a carbon footprint. There is nothing we can do about that. But if we all reduce ours slightly, we can make Earth last a lot longer.

My family's carbon footprint was a lot more than I had expected. Using the calculator I noticed how much our family waste on food and even on our household appliances. Despite the enormous amount of energy we use in our household I am also proud of how our family reduces our carbon emissions through taking public transportation and using reusable bags when shopping. In hopes to reduce my carbon footprint, I plan to reduce my shower time and I also want to change the way we as a family wash our dishes. Instead of keeping the faucet on the whole time, I would turn it off any time the faucet is not needed. Knowing how important it is to save water (especially as we are in a drought), it is imperative that we start to take cold, shorter showers to save energy. As I shall start to make changes in my life to reduce my carbon footprint, I hope everyone else will make changes to their lifestyle too.

I was surprised at how high my family's carbon footprint is.  I thought we did a lot to stay environmentally friendly.  We recycle, compost, and try to conserve water and resources as much as we can.  But I figured out later on that the reason our carbon footprint was higher than I expected was because of transportation.  We have four gasoline powered cars and zero electric cars which does a lot of damage to the environment.  This activity has made me realize just how bad cars are for the environment and has encouraged me and my family to maybe drive a little less.  There are around 1.4 billion cars on the planet and each emit around 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually.  This statistic goes to show how poor for the environment cars are and how urgent the need to convert to electric cars is.  I now want to do as much as I can to produce less waste and care for the environment with everything I do.  Our Earth is in danger and we all must do our part to help it stay alive.  I hope that the first car I buy is an electric car to do my part.  Here is a link that goes in depth about the terrible damage cars cause to the environment. https://sciencing.com/effects-car-pollu … 23581.html

When my survey finished and it turned out my carbon footprint was 55% higher than the average in my area, I was shocked. My family has two electric cars, solar panels, no AC, all LED lights, etc. Turns out that all my categories except one were below average; but my transportation footprint was far higher than the average. This is because of how much I fly. I fly back and forth to Hawaii, a 5 hour flight, multiple times a year to visit my grandparents. I did not realize that, according to the New York Times, a round trip flight of 2,500 miles each way creates 2-3 tons of carbon dioxide per passenger. So despite everything my family does, like with the electric cars and solar panels, we still ended up polluting significantly higher than we (in order to create a sustainable world) should. So the number one thing I can do to make a cleaner future is to fly less.

Last year, my family decided to go solar. When I got to the section of the carbon footprint questionnaire that addresses energy usage, my carbon footprint was brought down drastically when I answered that my house was run by solar energy. The questionnaire showed me how much of an impact that decision made. Another way that my carbon footprint was cut down was because of the fact that I don't eat meat very often. I only eat meat one day of the week, if that, and when I answered that I only had meat that much, my carbon footprint barely went up. Of course, I know that being fully vegetarian brings your footprint down even more, but even cutting down on your meat intake as much as you can helps so, so much. Lastly, my family has recently made a commitment to switch to buying as little plastic as possible, and when necessary, only buying fully recyclable plastic. This decision was easy to make, but it has not been so easy to find everything we need in sustainable packaging. Even harder than that is finding recyclable plastic. Even plastic that has a recycling symbol might not actually be recycled. In my area, recycling plants can only recycle plastics numbers 1 and 2. It is very unusual to find a plastic that is a 1 or a 2, but we have made the commitment and don't intend to give up. I urge your family to have a discussion about what solutions work for them, whether it be going vegetarian or cutting down on unnecessary plastic. It makes a huge difference and right now, differences in the path we're heading down with regards to climate change are much needed.

My family footprint can and should be decreased. It is embarrassing to even know about. That being said I will not let that stop me and I will continue to try and make them and everyone else around me lower.What can we do to make them lower? Easy, just a couple of things everyday. Stop Eating (or Eat Less) Meat. The single most effective action you can take to combat climate change is to stop eating meat, or just unplug your devices. Now that I have given you a couple of ways to do it I hope that inspires you to do as I did.

My family's footprint is average. Our overall score for lights and appliences was higher. We could change this by turning off lights, using heaters and fans less and turing off the sink when you arent using it. Personally I can wear jackets instead of using heaters and turn off charging blocks when they arent in use. A fact that suprised me was that to keep earth stable we (everyone on earth) must reduce our carbon foot print by 60%.

I was a bit surprised to see that my carbon footprint is slightly higher than the average person in my state. I have a pretty busy lifestyle as a student athlete, and I live with my family of four, so it's often hard to commit to doing things that better the environment.

I'm interested in seeing if people have ideas on simple things I can do regularly that will help better the environment and world.

Does anyone have ideas for simple ways to reduce my carbon footprint?

Yeah, I was also suprised to see that my carbon footprint was a little higher then my state carbon emissons personaly for me most of my travel can be done by biking and walking instead of using a car.

In order to lower your carbon footprint you could begin to walk certain distances or take a bike for example. There is also lots of room for using reusable products in this day and age. If you are a student athlete you could carpool to practice and games that would lower your footprint as well.

While I did not experience the same as you, my footprint was lower, I found that my food footprint was higher than the average person in my area.  I think I could be trying harder to eat more earth friendly, less beef and processed foods but I also think it has a lot to do with the fact that my family really likes meat too.  I know I need to try harder to eat less meals a week that have meat.  I do relate to having a high transportation footprint as well.  I think it is important that as a teenager I walk places before I get my license.  I know that most of our carbon footprints fit into these 4 categories (food, transportation, home, and purchases) which for me are all under control of my parents.  "Usually, the bulk of an individual’s carbon footprint will come from transportation, housing and food." (https://www.nytimes.com/guides/year-of- … -footprint)

I think to answer your question of simple ways to reduce our footprint we can:
- take shorter showers
- make sure not to run extra water while washing dishes or brushing your teeth
- have at least 3 vegetarian meals a week if you eat a lot of meat
- take public transportation if going somewhere accessible by bus
Using busses or trains can help because in dense cities it is better to have a larger vehicle carrying multiple people than lots of cars carrying one or two people(https://www.nationalexpresstransit.com/blog/why-is-public-transportation-good-for-the-environment/#:~:text=By%20reducing%20the%20amount%20of,air%20quality%20to%20their%20residents.).

I was also very surprised to see that my carbon footprint was higher than my state average. I do think that I do a good job recycling, composting, and not using that much heat in the house. Some areas that showed where I struggled was in transportation. I think this is because I drive to basketball practice and to school a lot, and not because of other things like airplanes. In the future I can try to use public transportation more often and walk or bike to places that are close by. Another area where I think I can improve my carbon footprint is in food. I did think I did a good job in this section, because almost all of the food I get is organic and local. I think the reason my carbon footprint is high in this category is because of the amount of meat I eat, which is bad for the environment. In order to reduce my carbon footprint I can try to limit the amount of meat and other animal products I eat.

I too had a carbon footprint that was slightly higher than the average. Firstly, I do my best to recycle and make sure that I put everything in the right basket. Secondly, I do my best to either finish what I am eating or compost any leftovers that I will not eat later. Lastly, I realized that the main reason my footprint was so high was because of the air conditioning and heating that I use. I am going to try and turn off all of the lights when I am not using them and, and with the 4-9 PM Califonia article and subject, I will try more to use less energy in that time so that I can help keep California golden. I think that if everyone tries their best to do this we really can, all together, make a difference.

In my experience, some of the most realistic ways to lower your carbon footprint are to turn off the lights in your house that are unnecessary to have on, which is something that I often struggle with. You can also start eating local more. Eating local means that there are less trucks that will need to drive cross-country with your food. Eating locally is an easy thing to do, and it helps a lot since is will reduce CO2 emissions coming from big trucks. Unplugging your devices once they are fully charged is another great way to reduce your carbon footprint, seeing as how continuing to charge your devices when you don't need to uses up energy. This is a very easy thing to improve, and I hope to get better at remembering to do it too. Lastly, practicing home-cooking reduces food waste. This is important because according to gobalcitizen.org, "1 billion tons of food are wasted globally every year according to the latest United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) report on food waste".(https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/conten … -lockdown/).

As a student athlete myself, I have found that some of the largest contributors to my own carbon footprint are carbon emissions from traveling, specifically by cars and planes. It's hard to limit your carbon footprint while traveling by air, but that being said, there are still ways to do just that. According to a recent article by the Ocean Foundation, ways to limit your carbon footprint while flying include: "Fly Economy. First class seats take up more space and therefore increase the amount of fuel used per passenger. Fly nonstop. This is a more efficient use of fuel, and who wants to stop anyway? Pick an airline committed to high environmental standards, fuel efficiency or a carbon offset program."

The Ocean Foundation Article:
https://oceanfdn.org/how-to-reduce-your … ou-travel/

After doing my carbon footprint calculator I noticed a vast majority of my carbon footprint comes from transportation. I am not surprised by this because I have a lot of sports that can be as close as school, but as far as Cuba. While I cannot change the fact I must travel will not change, but recently, my family purchased an all-electric car. Now when I must drive somewhere I will not be polluting the air. A fact that stood out to me is that we must reduce our carbon footprint by 60% by 2050. If not our Earth will change drastically.

After I finished my carbon footprint calculator I noticed that most of my carbon footprint came from food. I think this is because of how environmentally unhealthy it is for people to raise and eat animals. For example, when raising cattle we need to water the grass for them to eat, which uses a lot of water. We also need water for the cattle to drink, and while the cattle are alive, they release lots of methane, a greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Kingdom, the global total of carbon emissions is 7.1 gigatonnes per year, 14.5% of all emissions. By eating less meat, you no longer contribute to the meat industry, so they will produce less meat, ultimately having lower carbon emissions.

I have very big backyard and a lot of space for plants and animals. So, my parents and I  plant a lot of things inn my backyard. We have lemons, blackberries, avocados, plums, peaches, apricots, pomegranates, grapefruit, figs, persimmons, and apples trees. Regardless if we pant other crops, we have a good supply of fruit that we don't have to waste money on every year. Although every year we do plant things like tomatoes, garlic, onions, and kale. The garlic we don't have to replant every year because it will leave behind a few cloves causing it to regrow every year. In addition to our home grown food, we have chickens. Not only do we get delicious eggs, but their poop is great fertilizer and they eat leftover scraps. My mom has taught me the importance of leftover food so sometimes we plant it and other times we compost it. This link https://blog.epa.gov/2016/08/11/a-city-of-chickens/ describes how beneficial it can be to have chickens at home.

after calculating my family's carbon footprint i saw that it was higher then the average family. what i noiticed that took up so much of the chart was my family's transportation situation. this is a problem for our earth because carbo produced from cars is a huge factor contributing to polution i can try to reduce this by carpooling more

I looked at the results of my quiz on my carbon footprint and noticed one of the largest contributing factors to my carbon footprint Is the amount of heating / AC my house is using. One thing I'm going to do to reduce this is instead of turning the thermostat down 3 or 4 degrees I'm going to turn it down one or use another cooling source such as a fan.

I found that my family's carbon emissions were much higher in the Home and Transportations categories, almost 3,000 kgs above average in each. I noticed in the transportation section, the part that contributed the most to our emission was our air travel. The best way to reduce that is by not traveling as much, although I am not sure my family would be will to give that up as we travel a lot. However, another part that contributed a lot to our footprint was consistent travel, like cars. No one in my family has an electric car so we could reduce our footprint to switching to renewable energy. In the home section, the part that contributed the most was the heating method (my family heats our house with gas/fuel oil). A few ways we could reduce our footprint in that category is by heating our home for fewer months out of the year, as we do not really need heat in the summer, especially during the day. The Carbon Calculator suggested renewable energy to power homes, such as solar. I believe there are some complications with my roof, however, so solar panels may be more difficult to implement.

I noticed how high my family's carbon footprint is, and I wanted to limit them. I wanna start with limiting air substances like not using the heater as much if not needed and trying to use natural resources like the weather to let in the air that my family needs. Water usage is a big reason why my family's carbon footprint is high. I wanna limit shower times because a lot of water is wasted during that time. When we brush our teeth, we sometimes leave the water on while we brush our teeth. The electricity in my house is overused sometimes electronics stay plugged in the wall and are on when not in use, example the TV most of the time when my family members finish with it they leave it on all night.

After I did my carbon footprint calculator, I realized that my carbon footprint was a lot higher than average. My biggest contributor was my home life. This includes electricity, water, and electronics. According to justenergy.com, the main thing I can do to lower my carbon footprint is by turning off the lights when I'm not using them. Other ways is by driving less, not buying plastic water bottles, and or looking into investing in solar panels.

My friends got an electric car a year ago because they wanted to make their carbon footprint smaller. I wanted to learn more about how electric cars help the environment and I found an article by Energy.Gov that said: "EVs can also reduce the emissions that contribute to climate change and smog, improving public health and reducing ecological damage. Charging your EV on renewable energy such as solar or wind minimizes these emissions even more"(EV meaning electric vehicle). Inspired by my friends and my new knowledge about electric cars, I want to convince my family to switch to electric cars once the current lease is over. I can present them with the environmental benefits I learned from the article so that my argument is fact based. I know I can’t always control how much I drive, but I can control what I drive.

link to article quoted: https://www.energy.gov/eere/electricveh … l%20damage.

I agree that more people should definitely use electric cars. My large family uses three cars, and not one of them is electric- they're all gas-powered. In my middle school science class, we discussed what we all can do to reduce our carbon footprints. Many things came up, but some of the main ones were using solar panels and saving electricity, showering less and saving water, using electric cars, and finding alternate forms of transportation. My five-person family uses solar panels for basically our entire house, and I make an effort to reduce my water usage as much as I can. However, we haven't switched to electric cars. My family goes out of the house a lot, which was the main reason my carbon footprint was above average. An article on an energy website states that "Hybrid and plug-in electric vehicles can help improve fuel economy, lower fuel costs, and reduce emissions." I know that it would be really beneficial for my family to switch to electric cars, and although I can't drive I can help encourage people to switch and improve their carbon footprint.

Link to article: https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/electricity_benefits.html

I agree, using electric cars are a good way to lower your carbon footprint. An article by EDF states that "Over a year, just one electric car on the roads can save an average of 1.5 million grams of CO2.". This is equal to "four return flights from London to Barcelona". I believe that if more people used electric cars instead of petrol or diesel, which contribute a significant amount to your carbon footprint and pollution in the world, the amount of pollution in the atmosphere caused by cars would start to lower. However, the problem with Electric vehicles is their accessibility. I believe that in order for more people to lower their vehicle carbon footprint, these models of cars need to become more affordable and easier for lower class people to buy. An article from Reuters Events says that, "Insurance costs for EVs are on average 14% more expensive than for equivalent petrol or diesel". (EV being electric vehicles). In order for a mass amount of people to buy these electric cars and therefore lower their carbon footprint, the government and EV industry need to collaborate and create a plan. Another aspect of low accessibility is the chargers that are required to give EV's power/fuel. A major reason why someone might not buy an electric car is because their workplace does not offer charging station which are needed in order to drive the commute back. government support is needed for more of these charging ports to become available. Overall, I do believe that electric cars are making a difference in lowering the pollution inside of the atmosphere, but in order for any mass change to take place the government and the electric vehicle industry need to take steps to make these vehicles more accessible.
https://www.reutersevents.com/sustainab … accessible
https://www.edfenergy.com/for-home/ener … nvironment

On average, an American will consume 222 pounds of meat each year, and the average family will consume 888 pounds. Due to this, large amounts of gas emissions are being tossed into our atmosphere. Meat and dairy production in agriculture is one of the most impactful aspects in an overwhelming amount of carbon emissions. According to "INDEPENDENT", if we were to eliminate dairy or meat from our diets as a whole, we could reduce our carbon footprint by almost 75%. One does not even need to become vegan to reduce our carbon footprint. If we were to just be mindful of the amount of dairy or meat we consume, we could all reduce our negative impact on our atmosphere.

These statistics are a lot higher then I expected, I agree that it's important to lower our emissions and be mindful of the impact our dairy and meat consumption has on the environment.

I live in the US and like 98% of the countries in the world, we are carbon-positive, meaning we emit more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than we remove. On top of that, we have the second-highest carbon footprint in the world, second to China with around 5 million tons of greenhouse gases being produced and released into the atmosphere. At the moment the only carbon-negative place on the earth is the kingdom of Bhutan. They are removing more greenhouse gases from the atmosphere than they emit into it. Other than Bhutan, there are other countries who plan on being carbon neutral or carbon negative in the future. Finland plans on being carbon neutral by 2035. Sweden plans on having a net-zero emission by 2045. Finally Denmark plans on being carbon neutral by 2050. These would be ideal places to live. However, just living in those places is not enough for me to have a neutral or negative carbon footprint. I have to change my lifestyle and habits.
There are different ways I can do this. The biggest contributor in my carbon footprint was transportation. To start I could take public Transport instead of having my mom drive me to school everyday. When I get older Public Transit, walking and biking would be the most ideal way to get around, but it might not always be the best choice. I could invest in a car. While electric cars, when in use, do not produce a large amount of carbon emission compared to gasoline cars, they do, however, emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when they are produced. Electric cars produce 15-68% more greenhouse gases when they are produced. I could offset this emission by reducing my footprint in my day to day life. Another factor that contributes a great deal to my carbon footprint are home appliances. Ideally, I would live in a house that is either powered by solar panels or wind turbines. Ideally in a sunny place with north facing windows, so I can get more light throughout the day. There are lots of ways I can improve and reduce my carbon footprint.
For me to actually get to the point where I live my ideal lifestyle would require a lot more work in other aspects of my life. For one, if I wanted to move and live in a foreign country, I’d have to learn a new language, get a job and make a living so I can do all the things I mentioned above. That would be ideal. However, realistically I will probably stay in California. I can still make all the changes to my lifestyle, the only thing that would be unrealistic would be moving to Bhutan, Finland, Sweden or Denmark.

These are all fantastic ideas. In the United States, transportation and electricity alone make up over 50% of carbon emissions (epa.gov). Many things like driving become huge environmental issues when an estimated 115 million cars and trucks drive on American roads each day (brookings.edu). While going carbon positive would be extremely difficult, I believe that it would be possible with certain laws put in place. However, three ways I can start reducing my carbon footprint now are turning off lights, not using as much heat, and eating less meat. Often, I forget to turn off lights when I leave my house or my room. Turning off lights will save you money as well as contribute less to the huge carbon footprint created by the amount of electricity we use. The same goes for heating and cooling. Most electricity comes from burning fossil fuels, which create Carbon Dioxide, Methane, and Nitrous Oxide (epa.gov). According to us.sunpower.com, a large house that uses air conditioning often uses upwards of 2,000 kWh each day, as opposed to the 900 kWh average in the US. Finally, eating less meat can reduce your carbon footprint. Greenhouse gases can come from livestock, soil, and crops. Although living a completely sustainable life is what we should strive to do, these are three ways that we can step towards sustainability and reducing our carbon footprint.

One way people could lower their family's carbon footprint is by bringing a reusable bag when shopping. I learned this from a zoom meeting about how you can help the environment that my school had.

My family's footprint is way too high, does anyone have any ideas on how I could lower it?

You can lower your family's footprint by conserving energy, carpooling to school/work, recycling plastics, and eating more meals with less meat. Some ways to conserve energy are using solar panels, turning off lights in your home, and using less AC and heaters. Carpooling to school/work may be difficult, but using public transportation like buses and trains is always an option. Traveling by airplane is the worst way to lower your footprint. I recommend taking fewer trips via airplane if possible. The process to raise cattle and other animals releases a ton of co2 into the atmosphere. By eating fewer animals the demand for them will degrees, and with the demand decreasing the need to raise so many animals will also decrease, and the amount of co2 released into the atmosphere will decrease. All of the recommended ideas may be tough to get used to at first, but you will be doing your part in reducing the amount of co2 released.

Although there is not much I can actually do to change my families footprint I try my best to change little things about our daily life. I would try and reduce the amount of ziplock bags used for food and change to reusable containers. A study showed that Americans throw away around 100 million plastic bags each year. Another thing you can try is switching your soaps over to bars of soap instead of using bottles you have to throw away each time. But overall, just doing little things like making sure your lights are off when you leave and trying to use reusable things can help a lot.

To start off, you should first make an effort to lower your family footprint. With lowering your footprint, the little things count like turning off your lights and although they may be little they make a big difference. At home when you go to sleep, you should unplug your devices to save electricity as well as lower your carbon footprint. In my own life, every night I unplug all of my chargers, plugs, etc to help reduce my own carbon footprint. Along with this, you should turn the lights off in a room you're not in and to close your shades when it's hot or sunny to not waste cooling for your sake as well as the worlds. Eating also plays a big part in your carbon footprint because cows and chickens produce methane. For example, edf.org states,
"Cutting methane emissions is the fastest opportunity we have to immediately slow the rate of global warming, even as we decarbonize our energy systems. It’s an opportunity we can’t afford to miss.At least 25% of today’s warming is driven by methane from human actions. One of the largest methane sources is the oil and gas industry."

It is a safe alternative for yourself and everyone to eat healthier and greener. It is fine to eat meat sometimes, but you should try to not eat it every day. Along with this, instead of going to the grocery store to get greens and to make salads, you should start a garden in your backyard to have fresher, better food. From my own experience, eating healthier is not only better for you in the long run, it helps the world with less greenhouse gas production. Latimes.com states, "It turns out that healthy eating isn't just good for your body, it can also lessen your impact on the environment. Scientists say that food production including growing crops, raising livestock, fishing and transporting all that food to our plates is responsible for 20% to 30% of total global greenhouse gas emissions." This exemplifies how healthy eating is good for both you and the world. Lastly, transportation is a very huge factor in greenhouse gases. Taking your car into work every day pollutes the sky as well as going on many trips on planes. A better alternative is taking public transportation such as trains or buses. From kcata.org they say "Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and CO2 with public transit. Approximately 85 percent of greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector are related to the surface transportation system. Public transportation use is one of the most effective actions individuals can take to conserve energy" This reveals how bad taking cars every day is but how good taking public transportation is. Although I might ride in cars a lot, I take the bus to school which helps with my carbon footprint. All in all, your carbon footprint is high because you take private transportation, eat a lot of processed food and meat, and run electricity all throughout your house and to stop all of this you need to take more public transportation, eat more greens, and take out plugs at night, and turn out your lights when your not in them.

My family's footprint is way too high, does anyone have any ideas on how I could lower it?

My family and I can take shorter showers to lower our carbon footprint.

I think my family's carbon footprint is too much. I especially notice this in older people, such as my parents and grandparents. They grew up in a time when people did not really care how much carbon they were emitting into the atmosphere. And these climate changes are now too distant for them and they do not think this is real.

My family’s carbon footprint is quite high right now but we are trying to lower it by using our wood stove as our main heating source and starting to put in solar panels. We are also looking into buying a car with better gas efficiency

hi will, same with my familys and we are also using our wood stove right now for our main heating source, i defininelty think lights are a very large impact, we have a very large house so we use quite a bit of lighting, and when we leave them on it dosent just use more electricty it also raise the electrical bill alot, so in turn we have to use so much more electricty wich obviously is not always clean electrity. so i think thats one big thing to think about

My families carbon footprint is low but there are more things we could be doing. We are getting a wood stove insert that will become our main source of heat so that will totally take out our oil usage, cutting back drastically on our carbon footprint. We try to not use plastics and recycle everything that we can. I think that because our family is vegetarian that helps cut back our carbon footprint a lot.

Upon discovering how high my carbon footprint was, I began to look at what raised it and discovered that a large part of it was the fact that my house is heated for half the year.  Unfortunately, I do not know what to do about it, other than putting on more sweaters and heating less.  Does anyone else have any suggestions?

One suggestion would be keeping the house at a lower temperature. By dropping the temperature by a few degrees can lower your carbon footprint quite a bit! It doesn’t have to be during the day either. Turning down the thermostat at night is something many families do, but you might need some more blankets during the cold months.

When I was looking at my footprint I was very, very surprised. My purchases were relatively low but I want to start looking at and buying the things I need and not the things I want.

As far purchases, yes it can help only buying things that you need. But we can all admit that it’s relatively unrealistic. In my opinion, their is a way to balance it all and make environmentally safe purchases. When you do find yourself shopping, focus on local options before looking into big companies across the country. Buying your wants at companies like Patagonia, Dr. Bronners, and Pela that reuse, recycle and use some of their profit in helping the environment is an easy way to make a difference. In addition, when you do find yourself making impulse want purchases, simply ditching the bag or packaging helps. Yes, buying unnecessary wants instead of crucial needs is not the most responsible, but there is way to reward yourself with wants and buying your needs while making a positive impact on the environment.

I was very surprised to see how high my transportation was. Looking at it made me wonder why it was so high if we hadn’t traveled for a while. But then I realized that it was because I go so many places just around town I travel around our state to. I really want to start cutting down how far I travel and where I travel to.

I found that my footprint is lower than the average for where I am by a few thousand. The average is in the 14,000 and mine is 9,001. I could still lower it by taking shorter showers, or not charging my devices as much. As I am typing this I realize that everything is at 100% and have unplugged them. Another big factor to my footprint was that my house is heated by wood instead of more renewable energy, but I can’t change that. There are probably many things that I can and should change, like which lightbulbs we use, and how long we keep them on for, these things take time and effort that I’m willing to put in, I just have to convince the rest of my family.

I was surprised to discover how high my footprint was, and that various things that I had never previously suspected could contribute to it (such as whether ones purchases had packaging or not).  Some thoughts I had upon lowering it were to recycle more things and make sure that whatever one bought had no packaging.  Does anyone have any other ideas?

I was surprised to find out that leaving a phone or other device plugged in for longer than necessary increases your carbon footprint. Another easy way to reduce your footprint is to spend less time in the shower, and make sure that while you’re brushing your teeth you turn off the water when you don’t need it.

To help with my family’s carbon footprint I would like to install LED lights, low flow shower heads, solar panels to power my house, instead of AC I would try to use ceiling fans, and more. My house isn’t close enough to the school to walk or bike, so I need to cut down on other things relapsing carbon in order to make bálense for my car, or I could always just get an electric vehicle. I would also like to try eating using a plant based diet. That definitely won’t be easy considering how much meat I eat, and I don't think I would get used to it right away, but eventually I think I would be able to get the hang of it. It is something I would like to try.

I think that my family’s footprint is very low, for just myself I release around 9,000 kgs of carbon each year. Which isn’t very big, I noticed how low my home carbon footprint is. Which is weird because most people have a larger portion of their carbon footprint contributed by home.

I think that despite the fact that my family tries to be environmentally conscious, there are a lot of steps we can take to reduce our footprint. Relying 100% on solar power would be a great start, but they are expensive to get. Right now, we rely on solar power for about 75% of our power, but we would like for it to be more. Another step we can take would be to try to eat locally and waste less. We live in a rural, cold place, so eating locally in the winter is hard. However, we could definitely be doing more. Since we live in a rural place, we also order a lot of things online, which comes in a lot of packaging, so shopping locally would be ideal. Overall, getting solar panels, eating locally, and buying locally would be good first steps to reduce our carbon footprints.

I agree. We try to be aware of our choices but it's definitely hard to be 100% environmentally friendly. We don't have any solar power but are looking to get some in the next few years. Solar farms are growing in popularity, which is a great option for people with smaller roofs or roofs not suitable for solar panels. Composting is a great option, especially since it encourages gardening. When people grow their own food, their is no transportation involved and it promotes biodiversity, something sadly lacking in many cities. For new houses, proper insulation is important. This can reduce the amount of heat needed to keep a house warm dramatically, as well as taking into consideration the orientation of windows. Catching the morning sun could keep a house warm for a good part of the day.

I like the idea of having better insulation on houses to decrease the amount of heat needing to be used. I also think that especially in places that have really cold winter months, it can be hard to eat 100 percent locally because no food has the ability to grow that cold. Maybe having some green energy climate controlled areas would help to grow the food and make sure that not a lot is being transported in. When it comes to housing, a lot of the older homes don’t have insulation, so making sure that new houses have that and are more earth conscious would be a good contribution to lowering our carbon footprints.

I agree. I live in a pretty rural area so it can be hard to find things in local stores so I find myself also ordering most of my things online. A way to help this would be to either buy things from local stores and maybe not always get what I intended to, or if more stores were made in local towns. I think getting solar panels would help a lot for reducing my families footprint but they are expensive and it would take some planning and a lot of work. My family almost always eats locally except in the colder months when it gets hard to grow things, although we get some vegetables from a farm that has a couple green houses but we cant relay completely on them.

I think to decrease my families carbon footprint there would be a lot of changes we would need to/could make together. By talking to my family about supporting local organizations that pick up trash and clean, and primarily buying as much local produce/items as possible positively impacts the environment. Getting organic food and reducing the amounts of food like meat and dairy and going on a more vegetarian based diet is a friendly alternative. Short distances in cars can be unnecessary, therefore considering cycling or carpooling to places here and there is good. A big one is the encouragement of keeping a garden and composting rather than buying more. By using less water when washing dishes or with the sink, brushing teeth, taking showers, or other things such as this prevents the wastage of water. One of the most important things is being mindful of the lights in our home and heating. To improve this using more LED lights and turning lights off when done with them immediately after is the most efficient way to save more energy. We can seal our windows and leave the heat on lower, and instead wear warmer clothes around the house. Rather than air conditioning having multiple fans during the summer season can be very beneficial as well.

If I had my own home, I'd install LED lights, low flow shower heads, solar panels to power my house, instead of AC, I would use ceiling fans, and more. My house would be somewhere sunny and I'd live close enough to my school/work that I could bike there. I would also try eating using a plant based diet (whether I live alone or not). I can't imagine that it's easy and I don't think I would get used to it right away but eventually I think I would.

I'm a vegetarian and it reduced my carbon footprint drastically. But when I'm able to live on my own, I'd like to cut out dairy and eggs as well. If you slowly start and cut out one type of animal produce at a time that would definitely help. But living with family is impacting how much control you can have over your carbon footprint, which can be less then ideal. Once you can live on your own you can reduce your impact by a lot if you take the steps to do so.

How Can I Reduce My Family Footprint?

How can i reduce my family carbon footprint.

Based on my input, my total footprint is 9,143 kgs of CO2 per year. The average is 5,182 kgs for Belarus. I think it is really bad, but I know a few ways how to decrease it. Thanks to this program.

Try talking to your family about supporting local organizations to help pick up trash or clean parks. Talk about cycling more often rather than using a car to travel short distances. Talk with your parents about starting a garden and composting. During the hot and cold seasons try using less of the thermostat if it is not needed or when you go out. Try encouraging them to use less water when do things such as watching the dishes, brushing their teeth, taking a shower, or watering the lawn. Even making sure to turn off the lights when they aren't being used can make a big difference.

I definitely agree with all of these strategies because they can make such a huge difference in our carbon footprint and actually help lower it since we would be conserving water, energy, and not having to use electricity as much as we used to. I really like your idea about starting a garden and composting because I strongly believe that it can bring many benefits to both the environment and even ourselves since we would be growing our own food and not relying on produce companies.

In my house, I would ensure that my family and I don't have the lights turn on unless we absolutely need to. I would also ask everyone to unplug any unnecessary plugs so that we aren't using that much electricity within the house. I think I would like to grow some fruits and vegetables in my backyard in order to be able to grow our own food and not have to depend on large produce companies since they can have a negative effect on our environment. I would also try to limit the amount of meat that is consumed by my family so that we don't have such a high carbon footprint since meat production is one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.

To me, home sustainability looks like working with the resources and availability you have to reduce your footprint. This can range from unplugging your phone charger when you are not using it, composting, switching the lights off, recycling, walking, biking or taking pub. transportation rather than driving, growing your own food (whether it is a garden or something as small as herbs) to possibly eating plant based more often, buying locally, installing solar panels, switching your lights to LEDs or buying an electric car. Simply the act of being aware of your (and your households) impact is beneficial. In a dream world without injustices, or limited access to resources, home sustainability would work in harmony with the environment. Houses would be powered by solar, wind or water energy, food would come from sustainable regenerative farms, transportation would be electric, Household items would be plastic free and recyclable, and composting bins would be accessible (ie. The city of San Fransisco has compost bins where you put your food waste and it is taken to a composting plant and turned back into soil!!). With this being said, many communities in the US face systemic injustices which need to be overcome in order to make advancements in the sustainability sector of communities and neighborhoods in the United States.

In my household, composting at this point is second nature. We have a small compost bin in the house where we throw any of our food waste as well as things like coffee grinds and avocado pits. When the bucket fills, we dump it in our compost bin that we have outside. Eventually, my dad uses the compost to help with the garden that he has, and now it's come full circle. Not everyone can just compost like this because of space or resources, but overall, it's the little things that only take a few moments out of your day that will hopefully add up and make a difference in the end.

That's actually really cool you guys compost. I have been talking to my mom about having us get into composting and supporting the environment more. It's really awesome to see how you and your family have a cycle through compost and soil. Hopefully more people start to get on board with composting and gardening.

That's really cool i've been trying to start composition so far I just have a lot of soil and cardboard I'm not sure what veggies I can compost. If you have any tips they would be greatly appreciated.

That's awesome; we're doing compost as well. It's a small action that we can all do to care for the environment with not too much work. To reiterate what Kya said, hopefully more people will do this as well.

My family and I used to never pay attention to how much trash we used or where we bought from, but over the last few years, we've made some changes. About 4 years ago we decided to start composting and we've done that since, and with this, we also grow many of our own vegetables! Although we aren't the most attentive to our carbon footprint, we do try our best to conserve energy by using a clothesline to dry our clothes or never leave a light on. Overall I think my family does a good job, whether it's to save money or the environment, but I think we could do better to unplug devices and throw less stuff away.

My family's home energy usage is higher than it should be, probably in part due to our ancient and inefficient boiler. I hope we can look into and start using more clean forms of energy, like installing solar panels.

I had never even thought about how my boiler may be contributing to climate change or if its inefficient. I wonder if there is a zero emission boiler or maybe I should also look into getting solar panels. Thank you for making me think about something I previously wouldn't have!

I feel similarly to you both, not because I have an ancient and/or inefficient boiler, but because I too was made aware of the great amount of energy my family is responsible for wasting. For example simple tasks like turning off the television instead of pausing the tv, or turning off a light before I leave a room. Thanks for also helping me become more aware!

I think my family does a pretty decent job being environmentally conscious but I think we could do better. We do not have AC and we use our heating system minimally. We all eat almost completely vegetarian and we dispose of all waste properly. We mostly recycle and us the compost instead of the trash. We have an electric car. I think one thing we could do to improve our footprint is use less water, particularly hot water. We all do love  good hot shower, but I think we could be more conscious about how much water we use. Also, we could air dry clothes and hand wash dishes more often. These are a couple simple steps we could take to decrease our family footprint.

I'm in the same situation as you, where I think my family does a pretty good job being efficient and environmentally conscious, but I still think we can do better. We also have all the same things you described (no AC, rare heat, practically vegetarians, compost/recycle & the electric car). A couple things my family could do though, is invest in solar panels, something we've been seriously considering recently, and also (like you) trying to cut down our shower time. We could also install water-efficient/dual flush toilets in all our bathrooms.

I can make the environment healthier by using solar panels

yess I totally agree.

i do agree with using more solar panels. it would be better if you gave an example of where u can use them. and how will they make the environment more healthy?

Well yes we've known that for a while and the small effects are great and its all most of us can do for now. The pure positive effects that each person powering that's powering their homes and vehicles off of clean energy is causing on the world is astronomically better than what most of us are stuck doing, because most of us cant afford those things.

Using solar panels and other forms of sustainable energy sources such as wind and water would be great. There are, however a few problems. Implementation of solar panels and windmills would cost a huge amount of money and time. The problem is that we don’t have these resources available to us. The cost is too expensive and we don’t have enough time. The prediction is that even if we stopped all carbon emissions today, there would still be enough carbon in the atmosphere to cause the atmospheric temperature raised from the natural amount to be 2° by 2030-36. These conditions would be insane. Most areas would flood due to ocean levels rising and there would be forest fires absolutely everywhere. While solar panels and other thing such as that would be an amazing thing to embrace, there is simply not enough time for it to cause a difference.

Overall reduction of footprint in a household requires a group effort. Your personal footprint may not be the highest, however, it is good to encourage those around us to try to be conscious about their own footprints as well. First and foremost, we should determine what activities beget the increase of footprint in the house. The next step is to convince household members to expend less of a certain resource or cut down the performance of a certain activity/consumption of certain products. For example, I have noticed that my family leaves the lights on for longer than necessary. I make sure to be conscious about how long I leave the light on inside the house and I asked my family to try to utilize natural sunlight as much as possible to conserve more energy. It may be difficult to urge those within your home to reduce their footprint although it is worth the try to educate them about what their carbon and water footprint does to impact the environment.

My total footprint is 8,705 a year . What is yours?

If I had my own home I would try to make environmentally friendly improvements. I would try to get most, if not all of my electricity from solar panels.  If I lived in a windy area I would consider getting a small wind turbine.  I would also consider getting a hybrid car.  I would like to live in the country, but I would like to work from home part of the time, so that would save some traveling to work and back.  I would try to get organic food from a local grocery store and possibly grow some of my own food. I would make only as much food as I will eat and if I made more than I would eat for a meal I will save it for a later meal.  I would start a compost pile so I wouldn't be throwing away as many food scraps and other compostable material.  These are just a few things I could do to be more environmentally friendly.

I think that my family does a good job at spending less time driving in cars. For example my mom will go to work in the morning and most of time have a grocery list. So after work she can get grocery in town when she is there, so that we don't have to make a second trip. We cant walk to school or work because we life in the country, if we were to live in town we probably could walk/bike places more. I also think that we could try and turn things of when we ain't using it. We could also have the lights off when we have daylight and only have them on if we need to.

If I had my own home I would make sure that I shut off the lights, fans, and faucets so I don't waste energy. For example if it was the daytime I wouldn't need the lights on because I can see without them. I would also probably purchase some solar panels because that is a better way to get energy. If I had a choice to pick where I live I would pick to live closer to my work and school so my kids can just walk to school and I could bike or walk to work. I would make sure I don't waste as much food and eat it and make sure I recycle and start a compost.I would get my food from a local grocery store but I would also grow a garden and grow my own fruits and vegetables.

If I had my own house I would make sure that I wasn't wasting energy. For example I would try to turn the lights off when I leave a room. I would also try and not waste very much food and compost it if possible. In the summer I would try to walk to work or school. I would probably have solar panels on my house to conserve energy. I would take shorter showers to save water. And I would not use plastic water bottles more than necessary. I would also try to have LED light bulbs in the house to save energy.

If I lived in my own house and I was trying to have a lower carbon footprint i would probably make sure i shut off the lights when i leave the room and probably have some solar panels. I would also try and live closer to the school and my work place so i could walk and or bike to the place. I would hang dry my laundry and try to lower the time of my showers to save water. I would recycle and compost my food scraps and plastic, tin, and glass.

With a big family, I have found we are always leaving lights, fans, and faucets on. We are also leaving electronics plugged in over long periods of time and we are always on them. I think we can learn to turn things off when we are not using them and we can be aware of things we are doing. We also are using a lot of heating with living in the cold. I think we need to be more aware of what we are doing in the moment and learn to help the enviorment.

For my point view in our increasignly changing world this is neсessary to calculate your family footprint. Therefore, my family try to lead an ecology lifestyle. So, we move to live without any using plastic, papers etc.

It's difficult to make big better-for-the-environment changes because I am still young and live with my family.  I think one of the biggest ways my family leaves a carbon footprint is our use of electricity. My family members will leave lights on after they've left the room and they'll leave the tv on even if they're not actively watching. I have made an effort to talk with them and tell them that the excessive use of energy is not good for the environment and we should shut things off when we are done with them. But, sometimes they'll forget and still leave things on. We can also install more energy efficient and better for the environment light bulbs so we reduce our environmental impact.

My family was the same way with leaving lights and electronics on without them being in use. Over the years, we have switched most of our light bulbs to more environmental light bulbs. Before we leave the house, we go through all the rooms and make sure everything is turned off, but like you said we sometimes forget. We are not perfect at this solution, but we have definitely decreased our carbon footprint over the years.

hey bro

Would the use of affordable renewable energy for all encourage otherwise skeptical people to use renewable energy instead of fossil fuels

It can be difficult to reduce your carbon footprint for transportation when you have to drive on your own car og take flights to the other side of the country to visit your family because there are no other types of transportation available. What can you do when there are no other options but still want to keep visiting your family?

I agree I do a lot of traveling and was shocked by my carbon footprint. There should to be some way to reduce carbon emissions of airplane flights or possibly switch to renewable energy to power airplanes.

I agree with this statement.  In fact, I thought the exact same thing.  I have to drive a lot due to my large schedule, and the places I go to are too far to ride a bike.  Not to mention, I do not have buses in my town. So there are not many solutions for me when it comes to transportation.  As for flying across the world, I know I have visited several countries by boat before.  While it is not the fastest way of transportation, it is fun, and maybe can be used as an alternative to flying every once in awhile.

I agree with this. It can be hard to find alternatives to flying. It is so efficient and gets you all over the world. I think the best we can do right now is to reduce our other areas of carbon emissions to lessen the impact of flying.

I think now more than ever that keeping in touch with family is especially difficult without a large carbon footprint. I experience the same thing with my family in Germany. I have found it useful that in order to simply just keep in contact that video chatting has been able to replace in person celebrations, which in turn limits your carbon footprint. If your family lives near a city than maybe try to plan carpooling with your extended family to reduce individual carbon footprints.

If I had a perfect eco-friendly home it would be like this. I would set solar panels on the room and that is where I would get my energy from. All the lights and water would have a limit so we didn't go over and use to much per day. I would want our house near lots of public transportation so it would be easy to take and that would be my way of getting around. along with near a nice bike path so you can have a enjoyable and easy ride. I would also want my house to be near a town so we didn't have to travel far to get local fruits and veggies. my house would have a great recycling and composting system.

This sounds this a great eco-friendly home. My family's carbon footprint is very high considering the way we live. I think solar panels would be a good alternative for energy as well as being near public transportation to help reduce your carbon footprint. Being close to a town and lots of shops, I agree would be very helpful so you would not have to drive as far.

With a lacking public transportation infostructure in the US it is extremely hard to go anywhere without a car. This makes it extremely hard for even my own family to drive to sporting events or even work without emitting mass amounts of CO2, although the US does have one advantage regarding sustainable transportation. In the US we are lucky to be the pioneers in charging infostructure simply due to companies like Tesla. In contrast to other countries, in the US it is much easier to find a charging stations making electric cars much more practical. Personally I think for my family the only way to really reduce our footprint based on transportation is by going electric as our public transportation just is not available. I think as battery technology progresses more and more families will be switching to EV’s in the US, reducing our overall carbon footprint.

I think my family could decrease our footprint by thinking more about how much we drive and how much burning fossil fuels can harm the environment. Though my family is generally environmentally conscious, something like driving doesn't even really register as bad sometimes, and simply converting to an electric car wouldn't feel too different but could still make an impact.

I think something that my family needs to work on is transportation. We all spend a lot of time in the car and constantly go out to get things that are not necessary. One issue that we have is forgetting items we needed to get at the store and then having to go back again later. I think a good solution to this would be to make lists of what we need so that we don't go to and from the store multiple times per week.

After I looked at some of the other schools, in other countries, I realized our Carbon footprint here in the United States is extremely high. I think we could do a better job of determining what we are doing with that high of a carbon footprint, do we need to keep lights on in the house all of the time, do we need to eat a lot of meat, or take long showers, or drive everywhere we go on a gas powered car. There are a lot of things we can try to change in our daily lives to reduce this carbon footprint, especially here in the US.

I would say something my family should work on is transportation. Our carbon footprint is pretty high and we spend a lot of time in the car. Its hard to reduce our footprint since we have to go in the car to go to sports, work, food shopping, get things we need, and more. Some solutions would be to carpool more often then we normally do. Another idea is to wait and see if we actually need something before going out to get it. Before we use the car we should think about if we really need to or can we walk somewhere or just skip the trip all together.

In my family's footprint, I noticed that we use a lot of electricity, water, and use a lot of transportation. One way my family can reduce the carbon footprint is to make sure we always turn off lights. This can make a huge difference in the carbon footprint. We can also reduce the shower time we take, taking quicker showers will save water! And a final way we can reduce our carbon footprint is to use carpool! where I live, transportation and using cars is a necessity, it is how everyone gets around, but using carpool will save one less person from putting CO2 in the air.

My carbon footprint is currently at 7,841kgs. The biggest contributor to my footprint is transportation at 5337kgs. I think I'd be able to decrease this number by using more sustainable methods of transport like bikes. My town is very centered about cars, but if they added more bike lanes and bike stands, it would encourage more people to bike rather than drive.

My family footprint is very much larger than the average, but sadly it's inevitable. My family consists of 6 people and we live in an area that's a 20 minute drive to the groceries, 30 minute drive to school, 40 minute drive to church, 30 minute drive to my dance class, and more than 30 minutes if we want to visit other family and or friends. Since we use transportation so much, we try and do whatever we can inside the house, so it doesn't become even higher than it already is. We use solar energy, we recycle, we turn off any power source that we don't use, and we only visit family and friends only when it's been a very long time. I have to say though, Covid has definitely helped with my family's carbon footprint because now we don't drive to school anymore, we do online church, we only recently started to go back to my socially distanced dance class, and we don't visit family or friends anymore. If I wanted to change my family's ways, there's only so much I can do. Public transportation isn't really an option here, and it doesn't go to the places we have to go to. We can't go to the groceries any less since most of my family is either at the average weight or even underweight. My family's also catholic so we have to go to church every Sunday. Now things I've thought that my family could do are eating less meat, stop going to dance class (since we need to focus on high school anyway), make sure we all take a maximum of 15 minute showers, and carpool as much as we can.

i work the most currently so i walk to and from work and to woodlands elementary to get lunches on the day to day basis

It can be very hard to convince your family members to try to lower their carbon footprints I should know, my father has never really cared for the environment and that had extended to my brother and even though I try there isn’t much I can do to get them to try but we still need to try. The best way to get your family to make an effort is with persistence and enthusiasm  if you're able to show your family that you are committed to the cause with enough time they will join you, have patience because it will pay off in the end.

My family uses LED lights and always turns them off when not in use, in addition we use fans and blankets to replace AC and heaters try some of these and see how it affects your carbon footprint.

My family’s overall footprint was a tad  lower than the average, but there’s always  room to improve. For instance, using a reusable item such as a tote bag when going out to shop or buy groceries is a great way to lower our footprint. Furthermore, if I had my own home I  would try to implement reusable energy, such as using solar panels. I’d also like to live near school/work so that way I could emit less chemicals into the air when using a car as transportation, and so I’m also able to walk there. Having a good sized backyard would also be nice so that way I can grow my own vegetables and fruit and not have to buy them.

While my family’s overall footprint was lower than the local and national average, there were areas where we could improve. We had an above average footprint for the home and food sections. I believe that we could improve these two by only using our appliances when we need them and only get the quantity food that we can eat and not waste.

Family’s should be highly encouraged to check their overall carbon footprint and compare it to the average. People may think their carbon footprint is average or lower, but it won’t hurt to check. Just seeing the numbers can change someone’s thinking. As I was checking my footprint through the calculator, I noticed some very simple things can greatly affect my carbon footprint. In conclusion, “opening” the eyes of people can significantly affect their mindset and would turn the pollution situation to the better.

Like many, I was very surprised and alarmed with my carbon footprint number. I have already discussed ways with my parents on how to lower our carbon footprint, and I recommend you do as well. Implementing reusable products in any section of your footprint is beneficial, for example re-using water bottles or investing in a reusable one. Setting rules for your family members on when to conserve energy when leaving or entering a room is another helpful way to lower those numbers.

If I had my own home, I would work hard to ensure that it is as sustainable as possible. I begin by installing solar panels because, “residential solar PV systems are capable of meeting a household's electricity consumption entirely and result in 80% lower carbon emissions than fossil fuel” (tonikenergy.com). By doing this, my family's carbon footprint would automatically be lower. I would also make sure to buy a house that would ideally be close to school and work, and also close to public transit. This would help reduce our carbon emissions due to driving. I would also be sure that the people living in my home would have healthy habits like turning off lights when not using them, recycling anything that can be recycled, and knowing what is compostable. By following these habits, I would hopefully be able to do my part in ensuring that our carbon emissions are reduced.

Pets are beloved by many, especially by their owners. But have we gone too far with animal domestication and adoption? First, think about how many resources your family buys for your pet. Food, water, and other supplies are at this point crucial for a pet-owning family. These resources need to be manufactured or extracted along with being transported. What I’m getting at is that by owning a pet, you contribute to greenhouse emissions which are released through the process of their creation and delivery. Now, I’m not saying that your family shouldn’t adopt domestic animals such as cats, dogs, etc.. These animals already depend on our care and support. But adopting an animal like a fox just because you think they look cool adds to your carbon footprint by you taking care of an animal that doesn’t need your care in the first place. What do you guys think?

if i were to have my own home, i would likely use solar panels. i would also try to work with a neighbor or friend to create an at-home garden to reduce trips by car to the grocery store. i could run around the neighborhood or construct an at-home gym to avoid more unnecessary trips. ideally i would live near my work or school but if i were unable to do that i would want to be near public transit options. i would also make sure to recycle, compost, and keep reusable bags on hand in order to reduce my footprint and create a sustainable home.

My home could be more eco-friendly but I'd say its better than the average home. I live in an approximately 4500 sqft house. Our heating is solar powered which I'd say is pretty cool. in our house, my family is working on shutting the lights off when it is a nice day or when we are not using them. Even though I have 91 light bulbs in may house, they are all LED. Next year my family is planning on building a new house and hopefully we will have solar lighting.

You can probably research many ideas for making your future home more environmentally friendly, energy efficient, and connected to nature.

a very effective way to reduce your carbon footprint and yet still save a ton of money at little to no extra cost of money or time to you is to have you air conditioning and lights in your home on a timer. By doing this your electricity bill will reduce and you will not be wasting so much power when its not even being used.https://www.astralenergyllc.com/5-essential-facts-about-turning-off-your-lights-to-save-energy/

I think it's a very good start,but we can also use fan during high temperature, well of course, it's depend on the location of your country.

One of the many ways that a person or group of people can help reduce their carbon footprint, the easiest and yet very effective way is to skip out on driving your car and ride a bike or walk. doing these things instead of driving drasticly reduces carbon emissions.
https://www.ourstreetsmpls.org/does_bik … 0footprint.

If I had my own home, to make more energy sufficient I would use renewable energy directly from the sun. my home would be on a dry hill and on the average distance between my job, school, and transit. I would cook my own food at home.

very good idea, how are you going to not waste carbon footprint if you have different places to go to. Will you use public transport or other options that will save the environment please specify
thank you

If I had my own home, to make more energy sufficient I would use renewable energy directly from the sun. my home would be on a dry hill and on the average distance between my job, school, and transit. I would cook my own food at home.

Having my home on the hill will provide it with enough solar energy and it will prevent it from the flood at the rainy season. if I did not get the chance to get the energy directly from the solar, I would get my energy from the public common use energy and use it efficiently at home.

My home could be more eco-friendly but I'd say its better than the average home. I live in an approximately 4500 sqft house. Our heating is solar powered which I'd say is pretty cool. in our house, my family is working on shutting the lights off when it is a nice day or when we are not using them. Even though I have 91 light bulbs in may house, they are all LED. Next year my family is planning on building a new house and hopefully we will have solar lighting.

I was interested in compiling information about my life to discover my carbon footprint. After going through this process I discovered that my home and food carbon outputs were right around the average for my area. However, I noticed that my purchases were much lower than the average in my area and my transportation was much much higher. I spend a lot of time during the day in a vehicle. I carpool quite often and take public transit to school. I think the reason my transportation output was so high this past year was because of the many flights I've taken. Over the summer I went on 4 flights while on vacation and over winter break I took 2 flights. According to carbonindependant.org the average Boeing 737 puts out about 90kg of CO2 per hour. I took several 10-hour flights along with multiple 4-6 hour flights. This immense amount of flying time is probably the reason my CO2 output is so high. This year it is likely I will take only a third of the number of flights a took this past year therefore drastically reducing my output to a more normal level.

thats cool-J.B.

I found that out of all the categories, my transportation had the largest carbon footprint. I don't take many trips by plane so I narrowed it down to my transportation to and from events, specifically school. I don't really have access to public transportation to my school because I live a distance away, although I do try and carpool a few times a week. So for the time being, although it might not be a permanent solution, I've found that if I don't have access to public transportation to my school there are other environmentally friendly ways to get myself there, like carpooling.

My family does compost but we don't do the best at sorting out what goes in the compost bin and doesn't (I know what you are thinking "smh"). Looking at this source it actually makes a very big difference if you compost or not. I thought that wherever it went it would decompose and that was the end of the story when in reality it isn't. It can actually be very helpful if you compost correctly. It allows for nutrients to go back into the soil and be reused. It can also help plants grow with a wide range of effects. It can also make the soil better for planting as it will be able to contract more nutrients.

link-https://recycle.com/organics-compost-vs-landfill/

When calculating my carbon footprint, I found that my transportation and food was about average and my spending amount was below average, so I was pretty happy with that. Although, when I found out my carbon emissions for my house I was very disturbed. My home emissions were almost triple the amount of the average American! According to Columbia University, a way I can cut down my home emissions is to switch incandescent light bulbs to LED light bulbs. About half of my home's light bulbs are incandescent and I have no LED light bulbs in my house so that is a good way to cut down on my home carbon emissions.

https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2018/12/2 … footprint/

I completely agree. About five or six years ago, my parents and I had become more conscious than ever about the carbon emissions for our house. When we were attempting to drastically reduce our carbon emissions we decided to switch our lights from incandescent light bulbs to LED lights.  To maximize our results, we replaced every single lightbulb inside and outside of our house, amassing a total of roughly 50 LED lightbulbs. According, to the Department of Energy, LED lightbulbs "use at least 75% less energy, and last 25 times longer, than incandescent lighting." Furthermore, "Widespread use of LED lighting has the greatest potential impact on energy savings in the United States. By 2027, widespread use of LEDs could save about 348 TWh (compared to no LED use) of electricity: This is the equivalent annual electrical output of 44 large electric power plants (1000 megawatts each), and a total savings of more than $30 billion at today's electricity prices." For this reason, if I were to compare my household carbon emissions from 6 years ago to today, my results would be drastically worse. This just goes to show the incredible impact LED lights can have especially in the long run.

https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/save … d-lighting

I also agree with both of you in which we should be using different light bulbs. The results of my Carbon footprint was different from you guys. My home and food carbon footprint were only a few hundred then the average which I was surprised to see. My purchases were way lower than the average which was very good to see. Then there was transportation. My transportation footprint was 17x more than the average which was 34,000. My family and I could do many things to contribute to making this transportation footprint diminish. First things, we can start running our errands in one trip instead of going on many trips for many errands. One big thing we can do to make our footprint smaller is to get an electric car. Our family has been talking about getting one for years, but we have not invested in getting it yet. According to Colombia University's article getting an electric car will help contribute to the environment, and help with the emitting of greenhouse gases.

https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2018/12/2 … footprint/

I believe that you all are correct. My house is fairly large, an most of the rooms contain either fluorescent or incandescent lightbulbs. While my footprint was about 4k above the average, the place where I had the most problem was the home energy and transportation. My energy usage was at about twice the average. A big thing that could be done to help this is definitely replacing the lightbulbs with LED alternatives, and not keeping all appliances plugged in. As APeddadaBOD1 said, LED lightbulbs consume much less energy, which is less of a stain on the environment and atmosphere. ADelaCruzBOD7, I would have to disagree with you about the electric car, however. Although they seem like a conscious choice, the electricity they are powered on actually comes from mainly fossil fuels. The best thing we can do is talk to our local government and try to make changes on a level that will help out neighborhoods, or possible towns or cities. Large corporations are usually the ones at fault for such large scale emission of greenhouse gases.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsm … 6297e676d2

My family’s carbon footprint was mainly influenced by transportation. Although our purchases and food were below average and our home was slightly above, our overall transportation was over double the average family according to the International Student Carbon Footprint Challenge. We have relatives all over the world, our farthest living in Portugal. In order to visit them as often as we can, we choose to fly there twice a year. The number of flights add up, which makes our carbon footprint expand by a lot. Although my family mainly drives an electric car when we are driving around the city, we take our gas car when we have to go on long road trips. Before I took the survey, I knew that we already traveled a lot, but I was surprised at how much above average our total CO2 emissions were. My family is trying to go vegetarian to limit our carbon footprint in the food section. According to State of the Planet, you can reduce your carbon footprint substantially if your limit or cut out your beef consumption. We are trying our best but are still trying to figure out how to limit our carbon footprint in transportation while still allowing us to visit our family. Any suggestions?

Wow! I didn't realise how big my carbon footprint was until I compared it to my classmates. However, the majority of my family's comes transportation. All of my extended family lives in other countries and states so it's already pretty hard to see them more than once a year. Hopefully, we can figure out a way to make transportation more efficient, rather than cutting my family off completely. I do think flights are necessary in most cases because of family emergencies and such, but perhaps instead of flying to a nearby state, my family could take the train. And maybe when I go somewhere with a friend who lives nearby we can carpool. The solution to lessening our carbon footprint isn't sacrificing everything you like, but if everyone makes changes to their daily lives for the greater good, we can make a huge impact.

I like how you are surprised by your number was like I was. Most of my carbon emission also come from transportation. I like how you explain that the process in reducing your number is to do it in small steps because you can't just do it in one day.

I think that reducing our carbon footprint will require a lot of effort from everyone but especially some effort from high ranking politicians so that they can use their power for good use. We can start by reducing the number of transportation that requires fossil fuels and oils and we can start producing cars that are electric

I agree, this action would take a lot of effort from everyone. Reducing carbon emissions is a big task and I think that world leaders should come together and create rules against harmful products or events.

I would also agree with this statement as well since Global warming is obliviously a international. problem which means people who don't like to work together will have to. As the solution cannot happen when some nations do not follow the rules which typically happens with treaties and diplomacy. in addition regular people will also be forced/convinced to change their lives which isn't A easy feat.

my evidence for this:https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/why-global-leaders-must-address-climate-change-now

I completely agree with Nartan in that we have to continue to make changes throughout our daily lives to reduce our carbon footprint. I think a good way of doing this would be calculating you carbon footprint, then pinpointing the activities that are most harmful to the environment. After doing this, it is much easier to reduce your footprint because you know what is mostly causing your CO2 use. I also agree with him that the leaders in our country have a lot of power to make regulations for big companies. I would add that we as citizens have the opportunity to take initiative by reaching out to our local leaders and seeing if we can change anything. In 2008, the U.S used 6 million metric tons of CO2 and 10 years later, we used 5.2 million metric tons. I think this change is what we need, but there is still a lot of work to do.
Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/183 … from-1999/

I also really agree with this topic, but I believe the biggest problem is not whether people want to change their cars or not, but rather if people can change or not. As you know electric cars are much more expensive then cars that require oil and many individuals can not afford this difference in price. So if you were to decrease the prices of the electric cars, then the producers will stop making it because they will loose their profits. You cannot also force everyone to buy electric cars since not everyone has the money available and not only that but people who work to create cars that use oil will be at a big loss. If you then say oil car companies should stop producing their cars and start creating electric cars, it will also be hard because not only will this affect the oil producing companies, but it will affect all the companies that are providing for the oil cars parts. So these are a few of the many arguments on why this topic will be really difficult to go through with.
Source: My thinking

I agree that less use of vehicles would lower our carbon footprint. One option for doing this if you can't afford electric cars is using public transportation such as city buses. Transportation makes up 29% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. This is a huge portion so if we could lower this even a little it would be a big step towards reducing all of our carbon footprints. Another option could be to carpool with your friends or co-workers as much as possible.

source: https://www.transit.dot.gov/regulations … ansit-role

In response to Nartan's first point, I think that politicians have a huge effect on our environmental well-being. It is up to them to come up with plans for the people to decide whether they like them or not. Our nation and worldwide leaders need to start advocating for their people or else climate change will be irreversible. According to abcnews.com, "Global temperatures could reach an irreversible tipping point in just 12 years if the world doesn’t act dramatically to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere". That means that if change is not enacted now, the people's safety is put at risk. According to earthobservatory.nasa.gov, "Since 1993, NASA satellites have shown that sea levels are rising more quickly, about 3 millimeters per year, for a total sea level rise of 48 millimeters (0.16 feet or 1.89 inches) between 1993 and 2009". This could have a huge impact on people's lives. With sea levels rising, people living on the coast could have to relocate meaning thousands even millions of losses of homes and jobs. This would lead to economic devastation. The impact could be the worst on the poor. Poverty is already such a huge issue, if climate change affected that, more and more people's lives could be at risk.

I agree with Nartan that reducing carbon emissions will be a tall task but I also think it's achievable. It will take effort from everyone to change their current lifestyle to a more sustainable, including better choices on things such as transportation, consumption, and recycling. A great example of what is possible is the Japanese town Kamikatsu, it is the first town to create a zero waste policy and so far it's been very effective. 80% of the town's garbage is recycled, reused, or composted, with the rest going to a landfill. This is incredible because as predicted by the 2015 World Bank report, by 2025, 1.4 billion more people will live in cities worldwide, with each person producing about 3 pounds of waste per day. This just shows that work needs to be done and Kamikatsu, in my opinion, is a perfect role model.

https://siteresources.worldbank.org/INT … /Chap3.pdf

I have realized through this calculation that my family is below average on the carbon footprint chart, yet still struggles with certain areas and has a lot of room to improve. For example, we have a very high caloric intake average and we could probably eat less processed foods.

In the perfect world, I would be responsible for living in a household that was quite environmentally friendly and did not cause harm to myself, others, or the environment we live in. We would live in an area that was relatively close to work as well as schools. In addition, if we are not riding public transit, we would be very adamant about carpooling consistently. Most of our electricity would be derived from solar panels and the food in the house would come from mainly organic, farm to table sources. Finally, I would also aspire to have an electric car because that would cut down on fossil fuel emissions into the atmosphere. I believe that is the best course of action when engaging with this topic.

Before I received my Carbon Footprint score, I was not conscious of the effect the type of lightbulb could have on the environment. If I were to switch all my incandescent bulbs to LED bulbs, my overall Carbon Footprint score lowers by 2,000 kgs. After some research, I learned that the drawback of incandescent bulbs on the environment is that they use more energy to light rooms, unlike LEDs which produce light in a more sustainable way. An LED’s 16.5-watt bulb is as efficient as a 75-watt incandescent bulb.  Also, LEDs do not contain substances that would be harmful to the environment like mercury which can be found in fluorescent bulbs. Overall, I know I already use some LEDs within my household, and I learned that it’s more cost-efficient, in the long run, to change your lights so my plan is to switch out all my incandescent bulbs by the end of the year, and encourage other’s who can to switch their bulbs as well.
Source: https://greenamerica.org/green-living/c … tter-bulbs

Flight travel is one of the leading causes of carbon emissions. In my family's carbon footprint, flight travel accounted for over half of our overall footprint. One way that the carbon footprint of flight travel could be decreased are through flight rationing, where each person has a maximum set for how many kilometers they can travel in a year. This would lead to a decrease in flights taken, which would obviously lower the impact of flights on carbon emission. Another way that flights could become more sustainable is by evolving the current fuel based airplanes into electric airplanes. If planes were electric they could possibly create no carbon footprint at all. The planes energy could come from solar panels or any other electric source, which would overall be more environmentally sustainable than the fossil fuels currently used. In the end, while it would be difficult, there are a couple ways that flight travel could be made more sustainable.

https://qz.com/1691299/four-sustainable … ir-travel/

My family footprint has a lot of carbon in it. We are a big impact of the carbon footprint. We do not have a place that recycles so we have to throw everything a way. We travel a lot, we drive cars everyday.

In my personal experience, not everyone can afford energy efficient options. Solar panels, electric cars, personal methods of compost, etc are very expensive. And beyond expenses, it can be harder to encourage more than just yourself to participate in helping to reduce global warming. My suggestion is to return to Google. Google places that will accept recycling in your area, and if it at all helps, placing your family can travel via car instead of plane. And even beyond that, try to think about ways to reduce your person carbon emissions in ways separate from your family.

Drive less bike more

Agreed

I’m going to try to bike to school three days a week

I’m going to try to bike to school three days a week and bus the other two days

I always try to walk to school except if it’s raining really hard.

I sadly live 20 Miles away from school.

I think the idea of biking more and driving less is an excellent plan but it is not always something that is accessible for all. Bikes can be expensive and I know, at least in my experience, many of the places to which I am traveling are over fifteen miles away, which can be an extremely long distance to travel by bike. I often choose an often easier option, public transportation. According to officials at the Federal Transit Association, "Public transportation also benefits those not using it because it helps reduce energy consumption, greenhouse gases, and other pollutants." In many cities, public transportation is also an affordable and convenient option. I urge everyone who cannot bike or walk to their destinations to instead consider using public transit.
Source: https://www.southuniversity.edu/news-an … tion-31178

I think its a great idea its beter for our health and nature.

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I think that we should always try to walk or bike somewhere we have to go if we are able to and in a good condition. It's both good for out health and our environment instead of driving everywhere we go.

Yes riding a bike is way healthier for the earth and everything but i hope in the future or even now they find some kind of fuel for the car that doesn´t affect our planet in a bad way.

we should use bikes more because they are not bad for the nature and they are better for our health. you are helping the environment and getting a good workout at the same time.

i think we need to walk more and bike more. we need to think more what we are doing to our planet.

Riding a bike or walking instead of traveling with a car is a great idea for those who can and are only going short distances. It is healthier for our planet and our bodies to not use our cars for such short distances

I think that as you get older and get your driver license people stop walking and biking. People should really consider it to drive less and bike more because it will help our environment

Riding a bike or walking instead of traveling with a car is a great idea for those who can and are only going short distances. It is healthier for our planet and our bodies to not use our cars for such short distances

I think that is a great idea because bike is not bad for the nature and good for your health. People who live near their work or school should use their more bike and not their car especially in the summer time.

I could not agree more. It is very important to walk and bike as much as we can.

I agree that, we have to bike more or walk.

I totally agree. cars are so bad for the environment and if you walk or bike you get the exercise of it too. its a win win situation. if you need to travel a long way, I would suggest taking a bus.

I agree. We should always walk or bike when we can in stead of driving. We need to stop being lazy and walk as much as we can. It is also healthy to go outside and its good to use that as a workout instead of driving to the gym!!

I totally agree. walk more and bike more.

I completely agree that biking more is highly ideal for our environment, as the use of personal cars to drive places does have a huge impact on our carbon emissions. The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions says that cars make up almost half of the carbon dioxide emission and that burning just one gallon of gas results in about 20 pounds of carbon, so it is clear that there is definitely an issue here that needs to be solved. However, according to a website called "Bicycle Universe", the average cost of a bike in U.S. dollars is $350-700. To spend money like this on a bike, you have to be able to commit to riding it a lot and getting in a good use of it as it is not cheap. On that topic, for many people it is hard to ride a bike a lot as many areas do not have only flat roads or sidewalks which makes it hard to feel motivated to ride it. In addition, if you are trying to use it as a day to day mode of transportation, that can be hard too, because sometimes the distances you have to travel are too far to travel by bike or even walk. A good alternative could be public transportation such as the bus. I take the bus a lot and I really like it, as it always gets me where I need to be on time. Even things like the subway or metro which "produce 76% less in greenhouse gas emissions per passenger mile than an average single-occupancy vehicle(SOV)"(U.S. Department of Transportation). As you can see, there are many other ways to get from place to place that also do a good job of reducing carbon emissions.
Sources:
https://www.c2es.org/content/reducing-y … footprint/
https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.d … ge2010.pdf
https://bicycleuniverse.com/how-much-does-a-bike-cost/

In total, I found that I released approximately 13,714 kilograms of carbon dioxide last year, making my carbon emissions about 141% the average Californian’s and approximately 362% the average person worldwide’s. Naturally, I was surprised and horrified by this result, as I deeply care about the environment and try my best to prioritize sustainability. I reuse and recycle materials whenever I can, eat less than 2,000 calories a day, turn off the lights at home when I am not in the room, and take other measures to protect our planet.

When I looked into my emission totals for each category, I realized that my carbon emissions were below the average Californian’s in home energy, food, and personal purchases. However, I released about 8,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide for transportation last year, and this amount is about 313% the average Californian’s. According to the British Broadcasting Corporation article “Climate Change: Should you fly, drive, or take the train?”, the combustion of aircraft fuel emits significant amounts of greenhouse gases (especially carbon dioxide), which lead to global warming. Last year, I took eight flights, so it makes sense that my unsustainable transportation choices would release a lot of carbon dioxide.

Since 75% of my flights were to Southern California, I intend to reduce my carbon footprint by carpooling with my family for these short journeys instead of taking commercial flights.The B.B.C. article “Climate Change: Should you fly, drive, or take the train?” continues to explain how research by the Department of the Environment, Fisheries and Rural Affairs shows that a single person emits 133 grams of carbon dioxide (in addition to 121 grams of non-CO2  emissions) for every kilometer traveled on a commercial flight, while a person driving a car with three other passengers only releases 43 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer. Additionally, I can ask my family about having more local vacations so that we travel smaller distances.

Link to B.B.C. article “Climate Change: Should you fly, drive, or take the train?”: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49349566

Composting is a method for treating solid waste and allows organic waste to be broken down aerobically.
Is composting a much greener option than dumping in landfill?
Is it true that waste broken down in landfill sites produces harmful greenhouse gas emissions, whereas that decomposed by composting does not?

Composting is a much greener option than dumping in landfill because it does not produce harmful greenhouse gas emissions. Yes it is true that waste broken down in landfill sites produces harmful greenhouse gas emissions, whereas that decomposed by composting does not. Essentially its methane versus carbon dioxide. Different greenhouse gases have more heat holding capability in the atmosphere. Methane (CH4) can hold 25 times more heat than carbon dioxide (CO2). Landfill gas is comprised of roughly 50% CO2 and 50% CH4. The methane is developed due to the anaerobic decomposition – lack of oxygen – that takes place in a landfill. Whereas a compost pile decomposes aerobically – with oxygen – producing mainly CO2. This depends upon the types and ratio of material included in the compost (i.e., food, manure, yard waste), and how often the pile is turned or use of another method of oxygen introduction.

(https://recycle.com/organics-compost-vs-landfill/)

Another crucial way that we can reduce our carbon footprint is in our spending of money. We use a lot of our money recreationally to spend on things that we don't need. Eventually, all this stuff is wasted and thrown away and that contributes to our carbon footprint as well. We need to learn how to moderately use our money.

While calculating my carbon footprint I found a common pattern that I'd have a lower score than the average for my area. I was quite happy about that until I got into the Transportation section. In it it asks for your number of flights to and how much distance was traveled. My family normally goes on about 3 to 4 vacations across the country or occasionally out of the country. Needless to say my "score" skyrocketed after that and grew to be much larger than the average carbon emissions for our area. I live in America which has been notorious for its carbon emissions and a lot of that comes from the industry and the burning of fossil fuels for electricity. After some research ( Link below ) I found that transportation makes up more than a quarter of the US' emissions and is also a larger factor than the industry and electricity separately. This has lead me to believe that cutting down on unnecessary flights could be a huge help to the earth as a whole. I do understand by the way that the Transportation category includes travel through automobiles. Though honestly I think that my argument still applies as air travel is still a major part of this category.

Not to sure how to link. Sorry about that. Still is below.
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/source … -emissions

I want to make an animated video, showing all the horrible things that will happen if we were to continue on the path we are taking. Using Scare Tactics as a form of advertising would perhaps motive those who are informed.

I thought based on my results my footprint was a lot larger than others, as each topic seems to encompass any other people the same topics in my class. When I was finished calculating I realized I spent a lot of time on transportation this past year, from mainly flying place to place, which I now realize releases thousands of gas particles into the air, polluting over the past months. I didn't really have much of an effect with like shopping, because I do not like to do that so often, which actually benefited myself, as I later learned the plastic bags used to package clothing, is harmful to the environment. My total was over one hundred thousand which actually really surprised me because I love the environment, and I am usually very aware of what I am doing to harm it and I'll try to prevent that. My results mostly exceeded the average for that certain part because I did use carbon dioxide,  and gas a, in general, a lot last year. I could try to improve my results, by relying less on gas motives of transportation, and either take transportation for more people to be eco-friendly or just even walk or run more in life. The choices we make do actually heavily impact our world, as shown through our carbon footprints, so we can look at these and try to improve each week, by recycling, exercising, not polluting, and more.

When I calculated my carbon footprint, I was surprised when I saw my results. The average was about 9,730 whereas mine was about 7,000 higher than that. At first, I got an obscure number in the hundred-thousands but then I had realized I made a mistake with one of my numbers. Once fixed, my footprint was in the 16,000s. I looked at each of the category totals and noticed that my transportation was extremely high. This was the culprit of my high footprint number. Last year I had taken many trips on planes and overseas which caused the transportation number to be quite high. However, I feel that this is not very accurate because I don't travel the same every single year.

I feel the exact same way. My carbon footprint was extremely high, more than my areas, which I was surprised about because I live in an oilfield town where carbon footprints are already higher. I traveled more last year then I have in past years and I believe that played a big role.

My carbon footprint is close to an average in my country, although in comparison with the rest of the world, much higher. I didn’t expect this kind of results. I’m a little sad about it because I thought that I was paying attention on things such as electricity, water running, recycling and waste. After I have got my results I did a research and watched a couple of videos on YouTube, just to be more informed. I found out that there are a lot of things I’m doing wrong and I learned how to improve my habits. We all should think about our planet and stop using electricity in the daylight, turn off all devices that we are not currently using, care more about waste we make and try to recycle as much as we can. Let’s try to improve our planet’s life by taking care of little everyday choices.

I feel very similar to how you feel. When I saw my results I was surprised on just how high my families footprint was. It definitely makes me feel guilty, but at the same time it is good to be aware of this. I did a little more research and found that even little things like not pushing the gas petal on a car can help. I also think that it's really interesting how you said that you are doing somethings wrong. I think that could have a lot to do with why people's carbon footprints could be so high. People might think that they are helping the environment, but are actually harming it more. Also you put in some great tips on what people can do to help!

Sorces: https://www.nytimes.com/guides/year-of- … -footprint

In my house, we only use LED lights but they our on regularly which emits a lot of Co2.  In my home, we live in a 3000 square feet home. Most people aren't usually home to shut off the lights, hence we have automatic lights that turn on at a specific time. discussions have been made with my parents and we will be changing that. Though, we also participate in the waste category. Recently, my family and i have found a local recycling centre that recycles plastic, takes in cans bottles etc.. and so we have also been sorting out our waste hoping to reduce our numbers.

I got a lot of carbon footprint because of food, but i think it's not that preventable right now because i'm still growing and i need the extra proteins and nutrients.

Drive less, walk more

Good advice for your general health, but it limits travel pretty radically in many places. Even here, there are alternatives including car pooling and the bus.

My results are very bad. I feel guilty. I need to travel less with car.

i learned my footprint and what can cause it to me larger or bigger

Our family should invest in more energy saving light bulbs and keep reusing paper and plastic bags.

i would enforce meal planning to help reduce co2 as much as possible . Our meals are very important if we want to save our planet and make a bigger impact . I would try and not eat as much meat & use less animal made products and substitue it with something more eco friendly.

Personally I think we should stop drinking water, think about the fish Alexander...

I think its a very good resolution it is very ecologic

To stop drinking water is impossible since we need it to survive.

Bike more

I'm ok with you

So today i calculated my digital footprint for the first time. It's not high but I expected it to be lower. If i were to live closer to my school, Im sure that my footprint would be much lower because I travel a lot per week. My household also uses a lot of heat, and if we were to reduce that it could help the overall result.

I thought that my family carbon footprint would be smaller than the average and the world but it's bigger than the average.

If me and my family take shorter showers and turn off the water, we can save water and resources

I agree with this and i can also do this. by doing this we can limit the amount of water being wasted.

I can also do this. Taking long showers is unnecessary and only wastes water. Setting a timer may be a good option to achieve this goal.

Yes, I definitely agree with this. Especially where we live we take basic things such as food, water, and shelter for granted and by being aware that we can actually save water, we are not only helping the environment, but are being more conscientious about are water usage. Additionally, I heard that we actually don't need perfectly clean water for things like taking showers, washing dishes, and taking a shower, only for drinking. These kind of water is called grey water and I think it would be a very good idea to instead change form using clean water for things that we don't necessarily need clean water for, and instead replace it with grey water.

The point of a shower is to be clean. Unclean water = unclean bodies ?

We need clean water for heaps of things such as drinking, showering, bathing, cooking and more

Dryers produce a large amount of carbon dioxide and there is an easy solution, line drying. Line drying would cost you less money and the only downside is you would have a longer wait time.

In Australia we use clothes hangers and put them in front of our fires and we only use our dryers if we are in a rush.

in Australia we rarely ever use clothes dryers unless we need the clothes dried fast or if its heavily raining.

in Australia we use line drying most of the time when we dry our clothes

Today we use line drying to save money and electricity

In Australia we all use line drying

I use the fire inside to dry my cloaths and the line drier

My family needs to drive less and walk or bike more

My family needs to do that too, we don’t live very far from most of the places we go to and we drive way too much, we all have bikes but we never use them when we should

Yes, i agree i also think my family could turn off the lights to waste less activity's.

I think you should use electric cars

Those can be very expensive so walking and biking is an easier for people to resort to

We should start biking are arounds

My family loves to travel, but in doing so, we take many flights. We should start to take road trips more often.

My family also loves to travel, but we are increasing our carbon footprint a lot by doing so. Furthermore, I realized that because there are 5 people that live in my house, it results in a larger carbon footprint than many.

@Finley M, Have you realized it takes electricity to power an electric vehicle as well as batteries so it's no better than just using a petrol-powered vehicle which is more convenient anyway. SMH

kids and people in general without a lot of power are doing everything they can do to help with climate change by doing small things but is it really enough? what other things can people with less power do for a bigger impact?

I don’t think the small things are enough. They definitly impact the thoughts and decisions of people who can do more about climate change, but not enough people with power are doing things to help. I think the climate strike alerted people in powerful positions about how much this mattered to everyone, but there needs to be more done.

Small things from an individual person aren’t necessarily enough to fix climate change. However, imagine the impact it would make if every person changed some part of their life to improve their carbon footprint. So in a way, they are enough, because if everyone thinks that way, it can have a huge impact on this issue.

I'm a high schooler, so, I obviously still live with my parents. I calculated my carbon footprint and saw that the majority of the weight condenses onto 2 different areas: household and travel. I want to try to do different things to reduce my own carbon output, but, I'm kind of in a rough spot. My family does not intend to move any time soon. We use a lot of energy through home appliances and heating. We have begun to address this issue with solar panels, but my footprint is still soaring through the roof. In addition, it is necessary for my family to travel, every year, back to China to meet the family. Currently, housing and traveling are two areas that carry the most weight in my carbon footprint and are also the hardest for me to find a solution to. I want to help the efforts to reduce carbon and climate change, but I am not sure how right now.

yeah i can relate to this. i also had the most in household and travel and they're kind of hard issues to resolve, but it is possible; even making the smallest improvements helps a bit.

You may try replacing lightbulbs, or looking at other ways to visit your family. Don’t feel so bad about it though, sometimes you can’t help it.

We drive all around and we use too much gas. It would be better if we walked or biked more around town and to sports practices.

I agree but sometimes bussing is not convenient.

I agree that we should try and drive less but sometimes practices or events are far away and you can’t bus or walk but I think people should try and carpool instead of using one car per person.

I agree. There are many ways of transportation that don’t require burning fossil fuels like walking or biking

I strongly agree with this comment but, it’s hard to avoid fossil fuels because it is such a big part of our life.

I agree that we should use cars less often because it’s really bad for the environment because they produce fossil fuels. So an alternative to standard cars could be using electric cars because they don’t require gas.

We could also use trains, which are a lot better for the environment and use less fuel. Also, getting people to drive electric cars is really hard because not everyone can afford one and some older cars are like traditions to some people.

I agree, there are many modes of transportation that don't require fuel such as biking, walking, or canoeing.

What would we use to carry groceries instead of cars?

I agree, you can bike and walk which is better for your body and the environment. For carrying groceries you can get a trailer for your bike that attaches for the back.

I agree, a couple years ago I told my self to bike everywhere I possibly could instead of taking a car or bus and releasing more carbon emissions and I have stuck to that, I bike everywhere now.

I agree this would be amazing for our environment

Me and my family get alot of our carbon footprint from the food we eat. If we switch to more sustainable food sources we can lower our over all C.F. and help the planet.

To reduce my footprint when it comesd to food, I chose to not eat meet and dairy. A big part of climate change is the overbreeding of cows so eating less meet helps reduce your carbon footprint.

Also, many people buy too much food that they cannot est in one sitting and so it is eventually thrown out. We have to try harder to buy meals that are not too much so it doesn't all go to waste

I agree, I am guilty of eating meet and dairy but I have reduced the amount I consume it. Little by little eating less. I know it isn’t that much of a difference, but I am doing other things to reduce my carbon footprint as well.

My family composts food and I think that it is really important for other families to do the same. Composting is like recycling, but even more sustainable because it can be used to GROW more food

yess! it's also important to compost paper towels if they're compostable. it's good to check the things you're using and compost as much as possible.

Me and my family can work on saving electricity and energy by turning off lights when we aren’t using them, and save water by taking shorter showers

You can also buy shower heads that let less water through in order to waste less water.

After doing the carbon footprint experiment, I noticed that my carbon footprint from appliances in my home was massive and it made me realize that we should cut down on how much heating we use and in general use our appliances less because they are a huge contributor to green house gases. What are some appliances in your home that are contributors to your carbon footprint?

A lot of our home appliances are used but have such a negative effect on climate it’s hard to avoid those appliances. It just means we need to use them less and be more aware of how much energy they take.

Me and my family can work on saving electricity and energy by turning off lights when we aren’t using them, and save water by taking shorter showers

I agree with you, my family also should work on saving electricity by turning off lights and everything else when we don’t use it.

i agree! my family(including me) needs to work on taking shorter, not as hot showers. especially people who use gas heating.

How can my family and I decrease our food waste?

Some ways my family and I could reduce our carbon footprint is by not driving as much as we do. For example as apposed to driving to close by places or sports practices or restaurants or anything in my daily life, we could bus or walk or bike as apposed to increasing our carbon footprint by driving.

My family footprint was high. I didn't know that two people living in a house could produce so much Co2. My highest was the home energy due to the wallflowers that I have plugged in my house to make it smell good causes my footprint to be 6,806kg. Also, the electronics I have in the house that we use take a toll on it as well. This article can give you ideas on how to reduce your carbon footprint and make you think outside the box. The article talks about turning down your water heater. I didn't know you could even do that.
https://www.nytimes.com/guides/year-of- … -footprint

As shown by myself, the sheer size of your house will have its own effect as well as it determines a lot of the practices that people will partake in. My home footprint was ridiculously high and my guess would be that it's exponentially grown due to house size and number of people.

I was not surprised that my home energy was the highest category to release carbon dioxide, but I was shocked to find out that my home energy releases about 7,200 kgs. I now realize I need to decrease this amount promptly. I found a website that gives suggestions on how to reduce your carbon footprint. After reading the website, I realize I can turn off small appliances like my microwave or my toaster when not in use. An electronic that I can turn off when not in use is my television or DVD player. This website not only discusses how to reduce your home carbon footprint, but also your school/work, and traveling.

https://www.greenmatters.com/p/reduce-c … nt-at-home

When I calculated my carbon foot print i was shocked to see how much was taken up from just living in my home. This cite not only helped me lower my carbon foot print but i could help a number of other people as well. 
https://cotap.org/reduce-carbon-footprint/

When I calculated my carbon footprint results I was shocked by how high my carbon levels were for housing.  The following site shows various information on how to help carbon emissions in houses.

https://www.nytimes.com/guides/year-of- … -footprint

I found out in the site above that, "In the average American home, 25 percent of energy is used to heat spaces, 13 percent is used to heat water, 11 percent is used for cooling and the remainder is spent on appliances, according to estimates from the Natural Resources Defense Council."  These statistics are so high; however, their are simple solutions.  A few solutions would be: turning off the lights, replacing lightbulbs with LED bulbs, and using less heat and cold in air conditioning.  A few more examples on how to help carbon dioxide levels in homes is stated in the link above.

Although it is oftentimes very expensive, I believe those who can afford it should consider installing solar panels on their homes. They are beneficial in numerous ways, the most prominent being how greatly they can reduce your carbon footprint. Once installed, they can even reduce the cost of your monthly utility bill.

I agree. Despite the expenses, I believe that solar energy is worth the investment as it can immensely lower your carbon footprint. In addition to this, in terms of transportation, finding alternative ways to commute can also be very beneficial to the environment. For food, reducing the amount of beef we consume would reduce the amount of methane released into the atmosphere which would decrease the greenhouse effect, resulting in cooler temperatures.

I agree with your opinion. However, we need to find a way to make solar panels affordable for families worldwide. In terms of transportation, carpooling, biking, walking and public transportation are good ideas but could, although beneficial for the environment, may cost our time. We need to find a way to be able to convince people that waking up a bit extra early every day or going to bed a little later every night is going to be worth it. For food, because beef is such a popular food item and is one that provides an extreme amount of protein, we need to be able to find a supplement that will be just as tasty and provide the same nutrients.

I agree, with the many ways solar panels can be decrease your carbon footprint and is less costly. They can be useful in almost any weather, with spring rain clearing dirt off the panels to getting sunlight every season. Solar panels also have the ability to be used whether it has direct or indirect energy being given. The only downfall I see is if you live in an area that is impacted by large amounts of snow, causing blockage of the solar panels.

I would get my electricity from solar panels because they use the sun's energy instead of burning other things that can release a lot of co2 emissions in the air.

I would get my electricity from solar panels because they use the sun's energy instead of burning other things that can release a lot of co2 emissions in the air.

There are many things we all could be doing to decrease our footprint. I have learned that my family has an above average footprint from household food waste and we need to try decrease it to help the environment. A solution I have read about is that we could start to meal plan. While this seems like a small thing that won't help much, decreasing the amount of food wasted can help immensely. By buying only the food needed, it decreases the amount of food being thrown away because of it going bad. Therefore, if less waste is being made then less trash bags are being filled and thrown away. Also, if you do end up buying too much food, another way to help the environment would be freezing excess food and using leftovers instead of making new meals. Even something as small as meal planning can help decrease our carbon footprints.

https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2018/12/2 … footprint/

A simple and easy way to reduce your family footprint is to sit down with your family and have a discussion about how to reduce it. You can talk about turning off the lights, turning off the water and using fewer electronics. These all sound small but in the end, these can have a big impact.

I completely agree, there is a term that I have heard before that goes something like this, "Baby steps count as long as you are going forward. You add them all up, and one day you look back and you'll be surprised at where you might get." - Chris Gardner. If we, as a family decide to make these small actions consistently, there will be a time, whether it is in one month or one year where we notice a big difference that we are making in our community. Many small things add up to one big thing, and many big things add up to miracles.

I completely agree. While it may be hard to change your whole lifestyle all of a sudden, it is easy to find little things to change that can easily make an impact. Even if you don't want to change anything right at this moment, if your parents need new lightbulbs, you can inform them on better, more environmentally friendly lightbulbs. Small changes could actually help save money and help climate change! Even everyone does one small thing a day, it can create a massive difference.

It can be hard to change your families lifestyle to something more environmentally friendly, especially if you are used to living a specific way and changing that lifestyle could be difficult to do. But there are a many ways that a family can reduce their carbon footprint, even if the change is small. For example, you could have a compost container in your kitchen to automatically throw away waste that decomposes instead of putting it into the trash. This is not a very large change but could easily help make your house a little more healthy and green. Another small step your family could take would be to remember to turn off lights when you leave a room, and unplug chargers even if they aren't connected to anything. This saves electricity and the unnecessary burning of more carbon. My family tries to take small steps like these to reduce our carbon footprint little by little.

I agree with this. Climate change and increased carbon emissions often seems like it is out of our control, but if we are conscious about reducing our emissions in our everyday lives it can gradually make a difference. These changes may include purchasing local foods, taking short showers, turning off unnecessary lights, limiting car trips, and recycling and/or composting waste. If more people are more aware of this issue and the ways that they can help, then this could have a significant impact and potentially slow down climate change.

I personally try to reduce my carbon foot print much as possible. I try to car pool when I can, because public transportation is not open to my access. My family does the same

I definitely agree. I also try to reduce my carbon footprint every day. I try to carpool, turn off all lights while I am not using them, I take short showers and try not to waste food. If everyone tried to reduce their personal footprint, the earth would definitely benefit.

I agree. I think if we do encourage our family’s to decrease out footprint it will make a difference. It can be as easy as shutting off the lights when not needed, meaning when not in the room or by using natural light for lighting during the day. Also by taking short showers and not running the dishwasher when not completely filled. These small things will decrease our family footprints.

Little efforts make big impacts overall. Taking the bus/carpooling, taking shorter showers, putting on a sweater instead of turning on the heat, etc. can really decrease your family's collective carbon footprint.

I definitely agree that the small efforts to be more energy efficient can help. If we all try to do our part even if it means simply taking shorter showers or turning off lights, we can reduce our carbon footprints. While some families may not like the idea of spending money on solar panels or electric cars, these small acts provide an easy way to help the environment.

I do agree with this statement. A lot of our lifestyle is releasing carbon dioxide and we do not even know it. Using appliances, water heater, and air conditioner is a big part of our carbon footprints. A lot of families travel a lot by car which is not helpful to the environment. My family travels in car all the time. Two years ago we were going to the Final Four in Phoenix and we drove a car all the way there. I have only taken two airplanes in the last two years. People need to start thinking about using less of their car and using more public transportation such as airlines, buses, and trains. This will helps a lot. My family's carbon footprint is very high because we drive our car so much.

Another way to reduce your families Carbon footprint could be installing solar panels (if you have the money) or reducing the use of your heater around the house especially if it is produced by gas. Lastly, an important part of reserving energy is to turn off the lights when you aren't using them especially when you leave the house.

I agree with you. I think that a way that we can stick to these rules is by sitting down with your families and talking about it. If your family enforces these simple things in your house then you are able to actually follow through with these things and do them. With my family, our electricity bill was raising significantly and we talked about how we should all turn off the lights. This helped us all follow through with these things.

It is very easy to reduce your carbon footprint around the house. You can turn off lights when you don't need them, donate old clothes, recycle, and make sure you are not spending too long in the shower. By doing simple things like this you can reduce your carbon footprint.

These are all great and I agree completely!! Here are some other ways in which we can reduce home footprints; 1. Install a programmable model to turn off the heat/air conditioning when you’re not home. 2. Add Solar panels to your roof . 3. Cut back on beef and dairy . 4. Reuse Reuse Reuse!!!  5. Consider low carbon vehicle and moderating speed limits because speeding and unnecessary acceleration reduce mileage by up to 33%, waste gas and money, and essentially increases your carbon footprint.

When I completed the "Carbon Footprint Calculator" I realized that, although my family's footprint is below the average, there is still more we can do to lower it. One major contributor to my footprint was our heating, since we heat our home for eight months out of the year. We can definitely try to decrease this. Also, we can take shorter showers, and make these showers a little colder. I can drink less bottled water, as this was a significant contributor to my footprint in the "purchase" category. Lastly, we can shut off lights when they aren't necessary and make sure no lights are on when we aren't home.

I agree that my family and I can take several precautions to lower our carbon footprints. Some small changes we could take could be eating more plant based diets (or at least eat less red meat), turning the lights off when we leave a room, eating more local and organic foods, and much more. Personally, my transportation footprint was almost double the average for my class, which made me realize that I can use public transportation more often to lower this. I take the bus home every day after school, but I should also start to take it in the morning as well as using it on the weekends as opposed to having my parents drive me in their car.

When i calculated my family’s carbon footprint I had some idea of what contributed to my family’s carbon footprint however I didn’t know how much each behaviors contributed to the CO2 emissions of my family’s footprint. I was surprised my family’s footprint was the average for my states area. I found that the number one contributing factors towards my family footprint was transportation. It was a common reason that was found throughout my classmates family footprint results. We saw the behavior in transportation that contributed the most was how many times I took the bus to school and how many kilimeters per week I travel for outside school activities. The second major contributing factor was in my home, I noticed heating was huge towards the my carbon footprint. The other two purchases and food were below the average. We can see that reducing heat and  reducing how much we travel has a big impact towards our footprint. Many can learn from calculating and taking into consideration how much CO2 emissions they produce alone.

A good way for your family and my family to have a more efficient household is to limit the number of lights left on inside your house.  This is one thing that my dad has been on me about since the day I was born and I'm still bad at it.  If you start to pay attention to when you leave lights on after leaving the room you will start to acknowledge a terrible habit.  The habit of leaving a room with the lights still on.  It can be one of the reasons that you are paying such a high electrical bill and it saves energy which can help with you and your family's carbon footprint.  In an article by constellation.com about whether or not it is worth it to turn lights off when leaving a room they said: "turning off lights saves energy generally".  This shows that it is usually worth it to turn off the lights. Another step would be to limit your shower times as the heating of the water uses a lot of energy to create the heat and can also add to your carbon footprint and your electricity bill.  another part of that is even brought up in a Washington Post article which says "You’ve  turned on the shower, but there’s no way you’re getting into it quite yet. The water’s not hot enough. So you start your routine, whatever it is — doing some chores, answering some e-mails — while the water runs and runs, much of it already hot."  this is an extremely hurtful routine which can waste tons of water and energy.  People have dubbed it "behavioral waste" and it just means that people are naturally wasting resources because it is just a part of their own routine.

When I did my carbon footprint, my families was less than the average in the United States. Yes, this is always goo because it was 2/3 of the average. But, we can always do more to help our Earth. For example, shutting of lights when they are not needed, using less heating and cooling in your home, use reusable energy, compost and recycle what you can and much more. If everyone did something to help the environment, it will be beneficial for you and others.

Don’t turn on all the lights and turn them off when you leave the house or aren’t in the room. After watching TV don’t leave the TV on or the water on while brushing your teeth. Use fans when its hot and blankets when its cold. This saves money so its beneficial for you and the environment.

For my future, I would like to base my energy source on solar panels. I don't want to have to rely on methods that release a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. I want to be able to rely on the most eco friendly way of sustaining my home. To me the best way would be through solar panels, and home grown food. This will result in less carbon dioxide fuels.

Same! I think it would be really cool and very energy efficient to have solar panels in my home so I'm hoping to achieve that when I get older. It is also very cost efficient depending on what you use

Regarding the question, I would make my home more energy efficient by using solar panels that cooperate with the sun to produce energy.  My house will be in an open area so that I may have time away from screens that may conduct a lot of electricity, yet I would live near a school as I do now so if I may have to use I car it will be a short trip. To get my food I would go to locally owned shops and stores.

These are some great ways of improving home efficiency, I will definitely consider using these methods in my own home.

After discussing with my parents about the usage of solar panels. They have agreed to save up and get them. I am very excited and I think this will be a great way to improve our efficiency at home. I also have been carpooling with 5 others to get to school.

It can be very difficult to cut down energy usage in some houses. Some require energy to upkeep the house or keep it livable. When people need things like medical equipment that require lots of energy or important work that needs batteries they can spend a lot of energy and have no choice. People also may have long commutes which they need to do for work. In scenarios like these, the best thing to do is make sure that all energy comes from green sources. It can also be helpful to optimize usage, turn off things when they're not being used and carpool or take public transportation.  Essentially if your family needs lots of energy do your best to get it from green sources.

I think that this is really true, especially for me. I have to drive a long distance for school, and that adds up on my carbon emission, and the only solution is moving closer, so some things have no solutions. 4/13/19

I believe that this is true, for me too. My house requires the heat to be on most of the time because of poor insulation which uses a lot of energy. I also have to drive long distances to school which increases my carbon footprint.

I agree with all of what you said. Trying to cut down where you can is important especially since it is really hard to control somethings like the distance from our houses to school and seeing family far away.  All of my extended family is living in Southern California now and I try to see them as much as I can but that makes my carbon footprint for traveling go way up.

1. Reduce: stop purchasing so many products and when you do try buying used products or clothing. Be mindful of what you really need!

2. Refuse: Stop getting single-use plastic products like straws by just saying no.  GET REUSABLES!!

3. Reuse: Try as hard as you can to keep things out of the landfill (buy things you can reuse). Try keeping things in good condition and fixing them instead of buying a new one.

4. Rot: Use a compost system! Find a food scrap drop off center like a farmers market.

5. Recycle: Properly recycle paper, glass, or metal. Research your state's recycling laws.

I think these rules are very important to remember. They help you control the amount of waste you produce. I think it is important to consider these rules when for all things we use/throw away.

I agree I think all of the 5 R's are really important and could really help reduce the number of carbon emissions released into the air. Helping to reduce the number of products you buy or think you need. I think the refuse one especially plastic straws and bags is really important to refuse because honestly do you really need straws? and bags you can always get reusables ones. I think reusing things is also really important because the more you reuse the less the thing is produced which means less carbon in the air. Rot: having a compost bin/ just composting, in general, helps a lot. Lastly, recycling is something that a lot of people don't do and just put recycled things into landfill which is worse for the environment, and by recycling you are helping also with the reusing step. In all, considering all 5 R's is really important and just by doing these things could easily help the amount of CO2.

This is a helpful acronym that allows people to remember the importance of reusing our resources to prevent pollution and to decrease the number of carbon sources that release carbon into the atmosphere. By using compostable items, you allow the soil to reabsorb the carbon that might have been in the product, which creates a sink. If everyone in the world stops using plastic that they can throw away after one use, then the sources of carbon would decrease dramatically. As the ways carbon can be released into the atmosphere decrease, then the carbon levels decrease.

I totally agree with this system. The 5 R's can definitely make a change in our lives and reduce the amount of carbon. For example, when using recyclable or compostable item, you allow the soil to absorb the carbon that was once in the item. If every person in the world was responsible enough to care about how plastic affects us, then carbon usage and emissions would go down. Correspondingly, when carbon outflows are decreased into the atmosphere, then carbon amounts overall, creating a healthier earth.

Turning off lights when not in use and using low electricity lights can make an impact in your carbon footprint. According to a study detailed in https://www.greenmatters.com/home/2018/ … ns-2017LED lighting uses an average of 40 percent less power than fluorescents, and 80 percent less than incandescents, to produce the same amount of light. So, by using LED lights, your carbon footprint can be easily reduced. In addition, turning off lights when you leave a room can conserve energy and reduce the amount of carbon dioxide being emitted into the air, and it only takes a couple of seconds.

I totally agree with this. I believe that one of the easiest ways to conserve energy is to do this and turn off the lights in rooms. I didn't know that LED lights are the most eco-friendly lights, and it makes me want to use LED lights more and spread that awareness. The amount of energy we use when keeping lights on is too high, and it is one of the easiest things we can do to improve our carbon footprints and help our environment.

I completely agree with this,  I tend to forget to turn off lights when I leave the room.  One day I left my house and forgot to turn off any of the lights in my room and they were on all day. I am always looking for ways to be more eco-friendly. A great way to conserve energy and bring down your carbon footprint is to turn off lights and have LED lightbulbs.  It is a very easy task and it only takes two seconds.

I definitely agree with this! Turning off the lights when they're not needed is a really simple an effective way to help conserve energy. My family already uses LED lights but we tend to keep them on in areas of our house where they're not needed or when there is still enough light to see. I think remembering to turn off  the lights when you are the last to leave a room, is a great way to conserve energy and creates less CO2 emissions.

If I had my own home I would include solar panels in my home to allow sun to reflect back into my house and provide energy for my home. I would get my electricity from using gas. My house would be away from everyone so u would be able to have my own efficient levels for my home. I would live near  a school if I had kids and would use local transportation if I lived far away from where I worked. I would get my food from a local farmers market to not only support local production but also support getting food from areas that don't produce as much air pollution to get the product to me.

I agree with you on everything except for solar panels. Solar panels are a great way to reduce the use of fossil fuels and reduce carbon dioxide but they are not very efficient unless they are in specific climate. If you live in a place that does not have a lot of sun then solar energy would not work good for you. Fossil fuels are very bad for the environment but they are the most efficient and you can use them anytime. You would not be able to get much energy on a day that is cloudy and you would have to pay a bunch of money in order to store energy for it. At night they won't work either because there is no sun. I do agree with the public transportation and the not using your own car part too.

With my personal experience in my own house I can say we have made a huge impact in carbon emissions over the 10 years my family has installed solar panels. My father installed 100 solar panels and the meter readout has informed we have reduced our carbon footprint in the last 10 years by over 1,095,000 kilograms of CO2! Using a carbon calculator that amount is equal to a 747 aircraft flying non-stop for 1 1/2 days. http://www.yousustain.com/footprint/how … co2=300+kg

I think solar panels are very expensive in my area, besides it takes a long time to install them. We have hydroeletric plants to produce energy, so we never need other sostenables energies, but the carbon emissions are equal to 0

My family's footprint right now is very high, to make sure my future family's carbon footprint is not the same we will work on reducing our energy and gas use. I will have solar panels to power our house using the sun to emit less carbon and our electricity bill will be less expensive! When buying appliances we will make sure to buy products with the "ENERGY STAR" approval on it, so I know they will be efficient and help the environment.
We can use LED lights, they emit less carbon and are even brighter than fluorescent bulbs. Another way I can make sure we are helping the environment is making sure we have a compost, recycling, and trash can in our kitchen so we can efficiently sort our waste. We will live close to my children's school so they can walk to school and we can preserve energy and gas that goes into the car. I can either take the bus to work or buy an electric car, which will be easy to power with our solar panels! If we go on vacation I will make sure to buy economy tickets so there is more people being transported even though the same amount of carbon is  being emitted, it would be like carpooling. I would install a programmable thermostat so it will automatically turn off when we are not home. Overall, I will make sure our house is environmentally safe by getting solar panels, energy effeicient appliances, reducing the amount we drive and travel, and making sure to recycle and reuse as much as we can.
These are just some ideas on how to save energy. If you want to learn more here is the link I used:
https://cotap.org/reduce-carbon-footprint/#driving

I would start with small changes like always turning off lights before you leave the house. But I would also like to use solar panels to help with electricity and a whole house fan to take cool air from the outside to cool the house.

First of all, I think you are right about turning off the lights before you leave the house. However, using too much energy is bad for the environment, which can lead to increase of greenhouse gas. I like your ideas, but try to not take in too much electricity from the panels and stuff.

I agree that it is good to start with small changes like turning off the lights before leaving the house. Many people do not realize that those "little things" can add up to huge amounts of energy that are being used. In this link,  https://cotap.org/reduce-carbon-footprint/ 25+ tips are shared on how to reduce your carbon footprint. As I scrolled through this list, I came across many easy tips that everyone can use to reduce their carbon footprint. For example, speeding and unnecessary acceleration. This wastes gas and money, and also increases your carbon footprint. There are many small, easy changes we can make in our lives to reduce our carbon footprints.

I love the idea of starting small...this way I won't become frustrated and give up, which happens when I try to take on a goal too big or too challenging for me.

When I get my house when I'm older, it would be important for me to create a sustainable living space where I reduce the amount of electricity and rely more on solar panels. I want my home to feel more eco-friendly, so I will make sure to have substantial things such as lots of plants and gardens. Most of my food will try and be homegrown and I will be aware of the heat and air conditioning. As for cars and transportation, finding a place close to where I work would be very beneficial. This will help with the carbon being released from my car. Hopefully, by then eco-friendly cars won't be as hard to find. This is very easy to think about, but in reality, achieving this high of an eco-friendly environment is hard to obtain. This will definitely take a lot of work and commitment. I am ready to start changing our planet for the better and if this takes hard work, I'm ready to start.

If I had my own home, I would make sure it would be the most economically friendly house ever! I would make sure to install solar panels on the roof to help with the amount of electricity used in our house to source many things such as outlets, lightbulbs, and more. I would also make sure to use high-efficiency toilets, washing machines, sprinklers, and dishwashers. I would grow my own food in the back yard to help eliminate all the transportation costs and fuel from buying food from stores or online. If I had my own home, I would recycle all of my waste and compost the food scraps. I would also make sure to have blinds during the summer because that would keep a lot of sun out which would reduce the heat in the house so you wouldn't need to turn on your AC for as long or much. I would also us a "Collected rainwater" system which is ideal for watering your garden and conserving water all at the same time. Two other things that could really make a difference are choosing well-rated energy saving appliances and picking the right washing machine that helps the environment b ecause they use less power than others.
https://www.choice.com.au/home-improvem … energy-use

I agree with this. I always think about how when I am older I want to make a difference with the how I go about my daily life. However, I have been thinking about this for a while and I realize that it isn't as easy as just saying it. Making all these changes in your life when you are older, and especially when you don't have much money and are trying to start your new life is hard. This sounds like exactly how I want to live and how I want to effect my environment positively and how I want everyone to live in the future but it will take a lot of work. I hope that when you get older you follow through with this wish and start making a difference one person at a time.  : )

Once I have a family and my own house I would probably like to live somewhere in between work and school, so that it's way easier to get to work and school. If I had my own house I would definitely be aware of the amount of electricity that my family is using. I have a really bad habit of leaving my lights on when I am not home and that can just be a waste of energy and money. I would also make sure to watch the food my family and I eat, the amount of trips we take and the electricity and energy that we use on the daily.

If I had my own home I would like to make sure that I do not use all of the appliances. I would also make sure that I am not using my electricity to much to save it. I would run the dishwasher, washer, dryer, TV, phone charger only when I have too. I would still get my electricity form fossil fuels though because I think they are the most efficient. I would like my house to be away from other houses and kind of on my own somewhere. That is not good but I would not like to live near anybody. I would try to be in close proximity to the school or my work at least so I won't have to travel far both places.

I would encourage cycling to destinations instead of cars, or even unplug unneeded electricity

Also lower unnecessary food purchases

Another suggestion! There are many other things people like us can do around the house. For example, we can consider mulching/composting food scraps in our garden. This can put the use of food scraps in good terms and providing nutrients  to the soil at the same time!

If I had my own home, I would make sure it would be the most economy friendly house ever! I would make sure to install solar panels on the roof to help with the amount of electricity used in our house to source many things such as outlets, lightbulbs, and more. I would also make sure to use high efficency toilets, washing machines, sprinklers and dish washers. I would grow my own food in the back yard to help eliminate all the transportation costs and fuel from buying food from stores or online. If I had my own home, I would recycle all of my waste and compost the food scraps.

At my house we try our best to reduce or carbon footprint. Having such a large family it can be difficult but we mange to reduce or carbon use in many ways.

We use fans and portable heaters during the fall and spring. During the fall and the spring the climate isn't so extreme than it would be in the winter or fall, so we resist using ac unit to something more sustainable.

We like to compost. We have a fairly large garden at our house so in order to maintain it we created a compost bin. Instead of throwing away fruit peels and foot waste, we throw it in our compost bin.

We carpool. Since I have multiple siblings and we all go to school we like to carpool with each other and other close friends. This heavily reduces our carbon footprint.

We recycle a lot. One thing that we have done for a long time is recycle. We have four separate bins, one for plastic bottles, tin cans, glass, and paper. I think that every family should do this because it's easy, responsibl e for the environment, and some recycling center even pay you to give them recycling. It is a lot more beneficial to you and to the environment.

I agree with you, and we share similarities about the recycling part. However, my family only has two bins, one for plastic/glass and one for paper. While reading your comment, I realized that it would be a good idea if we also got more bins so we can separate our recycling even further. Especially during our current situation, it's important to recycle more than ever because it's very beneficial to the earth and it's inhabitants, including us.

I think that this is a very important thing that all families should keep into consideration.  The idea of having more bins in order to separate our recycling is a very smart one. For example having one bin for cardboard and one for plastics. In the United States we throw away $11.4 billion worth of recycle every year. Another type of recycling that people don't think of is clothing, 11 billion tones of different kinds of clothing are thrown away into landfills. Not only does recycling lower our carbon footprint it also helps save marine life, there are 25 trillion pieces of plastic debris in the ocean. Plastic causes over 80% of the negative effects on marine animals and over 100,000 marine animals die every year from ingestion of plastics and entanglements. For all of these reasons, this is why families should think about throwing their recyclable plastics, cardboards and other recallable items in the recycle instead of the trash. This small action could help lo wer the amount of waste we have, lower our carbon footprints and save marine animals.
https://www.rubiconglobal.com/blog-stat … recycling/

If I had my own home I would first trade out all the lights bulbs to make them LED and I would also have my thermostat on a low setting and have strict rules about recycling and composting. I would get my electricity from solar panels on my roof. My house would be somewhere in the city but a quieter and less busy part that's more open. I would live close to my school and I would walk or bike there everyday and maybe sometimes bus. I would try and grow some of my own food but also get some locally grown food and realistically I would also get some from the store.

At home we should start composting our fruit and vegetable peels instead of just throwing them away.

Yeah, I agree that we should start or continue composting, as it has plenty of benefits to the environment. Such as, improving the quality of soil and reducing greenhouse gases.

I agree with this. Food waste is such a large problem when we can get rid of this problem while creating useful soil full of nutrients.

I think this is a really simple way to help out the environment and is something anyone can do.

I’ve wanted to do this several times but things always seemed to get in the way. I would still like to try to though because the reality is that it isn’t that difficult to start composting.

I agree that we should start composting. It is a great way to use egg shells,fruits and vegetable peels instead of throwing them away, adding to the amount of waste. It is also a great use to help with soil. Composting will definitely be an efficient way to help the environment.

I agree it is an easy way to help the environment every day. Also, it gives back to the environment and makes the soil more fertile. The fertile soil helps produce healthier plants that help sustain our growing population

This is a very good point. You should also encourage your schools to compost and create home gardens for the cafeteria. We have both of these things at our school and in my experience is has been very useful to the school's carbon footprint.

I love composting and my family has always composted our food waste. It prevents so much food waste from ending up in anywhere other than where it could easily go, which is back into the Earth. I live in a very liberal area that values care for our Earth, so it's always a little shocking when I go into other communities where they don't compost their food. It is somewhat frustrating because it is a somewhat easy way to instill a new way of care for our planet.

To add on to everyone else you should compost but also on top of that we should also try to find ways to reuse our compost scraps. I know it sounds really weird but, you can reusing tea bags because tea bags can steep and get more flavour out if you leave tin hot water for only 5 min. You can also reuse vegetable scraps by boiling them in water to make a vegetable stew, now there  are many more recipes like that. Fact did you know that the tips of the celery stalks are the best for making soups and stews? Also you can find videos that show you how to make your own homemade cleaners with orange peels. So composting is great but try reusing items in there before you compost them.

To create a more sustainable house I would get a house running on 100% solar panels. I would also live closer to work/ school so I could reduce transportation. Another addition would be my own compost to reduce waste.

I feel like going solar can be costly but the benefits outweigh the expensive cost. I think making my a compost is a more simple way to help the environment.

Most places like solar city have very good prices yet are so good for reducing your familys and your own carbon footprint

My family recently switched to led lightbulbs to decrease our carbon footprint

This is a good way to reduce your carbon footprints. Even a little change like this can be a significant footprint reducer in the long run.

This is a really good way to reduce the negative effect of our everyday transportation. We must look at every possible way we could help save the environment and start right now. These types of cars are a good way to really make a difference and help as much as you can. What other ways to help save the environment can you think of?

To decrease my family’s footprint I would make my house primarily run off solar panels. I would also move closer to my school so I wouldn’t have to do as much driving.

For starters I would start with small changes like drive less and bike more. I would Use less water and less electricity also.

What changes, please clarify.

I agree

Me too, I agree

I agree too

You?

well Instead of taking long showers I would take faster showers. I would turn off the lights whenever I don't use them. I would also start growing my own vegetables and some fruits. The advantageous to growing your food however is that it takes months for them to grow.

I agree, it helps the environment and it can save money.

I agree with this. If everyone took small steps it would create a big impact. In California it’s very important to monitor our water usage because of the droughts we get.

There are several steps that I would take to make my families footprint smaller.  I would start out small with decreasing the amount of time we shower for, turning lights off when we're not using them and spend more time walking places than driving a car. We should also try to recycle more things than we have been and using reusable bags at a grocery store.  Later on I would try to switch our energy source over to solar power. This would be more environmentally friendly and may help us save and even earn money. When I buy a house I want it to be close to everything. I want it to be close to schools and my work. If this isn't possible than I would try to find a group of people to carpool with. This will help everyone decrease time spent in a car every day and the amount of cars on the road. I think it would be a good idea to buy a lot of my fruits and vegetables from local locations or ones that are made organically.

I agree I think everyone could start doing more around their houses to reduce their footprint. Not everyone realizes the big effect it has on the planet.

I think that those are great ideas, and it would really help if everyone started with at least doing small things to change, since i realize that not everyone can make drastic changes at the moment, but every little action counts towards a bigger goal of helping our planet.
Also, another idea of how we could help reduce our footprint is to start buying more recycled products, since recycling doesn't help unless we make a choice to use those products instead of creating more waste.

I agree with that statement, "recycling doesn't help unless we make a choice to use those products instead of creating more waste." Because from my point of view, there are many people that say we, as a society, should recycle more. However, even if we do recycle what about what happens after the process? What if more and more people decided to recycle but only a few of those people actually used the recycled products? I would start to question the objective of recycling. Recycling is more efficient and environmentally friendly but if no one's using the recycled products the piles of waste would just add on which wouldn't help with the process of decreasing the amount of CO2 released in the air and climate change.

Yes I agree with you every small change helps in the long run.

I think that this is really important to do in many households. I would love to try that.

If I had my own home, I would use solar panels to produce 100% of the house's electricity.  I would purchase high efficency toilets, washing machines, sprinklers and dish washers.  I would grow my own food in the back yard and live a vegan lifestyle.  If I had my own home, I would recycle all of my waste and compost the food scraps.  I would also own a hybrid electric car.  If I am able to achieve any of these things, I will be able to reduce my carbon footprint extremely.

I completely agree. Although it is expensive to do many of these things, the benefits are great. I especially like the idea of using the solar panels to produce all of the energy for your home. Additionally, because I live across the street from my elementary school, I have found that being in walking distance to school is very efficient.

I agree with this as well. When I tested my own carbon footprint, I discovered that the energy usage in my house was way over the average. I believe most of the energy wasted was from the plethora of incandescent lights. If i had my own house, I would try to use LED and CFL lights instead of the incandescent bulbs that waste energy.

I love your idea

Nice idea about the solar panels, but they aren’t the cheapest you know, but I still think that I can implement it in a way..

I agree with you on one thing. It will be better and more efficient but all of you ideas will cost a lot of money. So on average it will be harder for people to get all of the supplies and tools that you proposed in your idea.

I understand where you are coming from, but have you looked into the negative impacts of solar panels? Also they are highly inefficient. I think nuclear power, wind energy, and hydropower are probably cleaner and more efficient forms of energy.

I agree with you about this. Your carbon footprint would be reduced, though it may be expensive to achieve some of those things you listed.

If I had my own home, I would get electricity from using solar panels. I would live in a small city or town so that I can easily get from one place to another. I would also grow most of my food in the backyard. These things would help decrease my carbon footprint.

For my own home, I would make it more energy efficient by only plugging in electronics that are currently being used, and unplug them when they are not in use.  I will also choose a house that relies heavily on daylight rather than artificial light.

Realistically would you really take out your electronics during the day or when you are not using them. Those small things are not really the main cause of all the power being used in a household. I do agree with using less harsh/artificial light and trying to use the natural light.

In my opinion, I like the idea that you would try to be more energy efficient by only plugging in electronics that are being used. However, I think it would be a hassle to unplug every electronic after using it. Instead, I would just focus on unplugging one or two electronics when not using them. You could focus on unplugging your charger when your phone or computer is done charging.

reason so you don't die quick

wrong

boi i think you die quick

Frogboy brings up a good point here

also in my opinion healthy food is good

Healthy foods don't taste as good as unhealthy foods.

Some healthy food is good for muscles, too, which is good.

Eating healthy is very terrible

Wow bro really deep

Preach