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.