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.