One of the reasons our carbon footprint is so big is due to food waste. Usda.gov says “EPA estimated that each year, U.S. food loss and waste embodies 170 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (million MTCO2e) GHG emissions (excluding landfill emissions) – equal to the annual CO2 emissions of 42 coal-fired power plants.” That's a lot and we need to work to make it smaller. Ways that we can make it smaller include, planning ahead and only buying the things that you need to make a meal, even if you make too much you should use the leftovers for other things. For example, if you make too much of a certain food like tacos, you can always reuse and turn it into a different meal like enchiladas. Another major waste of food is restaurants.  “A restaurant can produce up to 25000-75000 pounds of food waste a year.” (fourth.com) Examples of what to do with wasted food in restaurants, they could take the food and either make different food out of it, donate it to the homeless or make it into a compost and sell it to a store to make a profit. Another way that we can make the carbon footprint smaller is by growing our own plants or buying local. “Local shopping means fewer transportation kilometers, which translates to lower greenhouse gas emissions from transport.” (lgcet.com) If we burn less gas, that means our carbon footprint will be smaller. Scientists also mentioned “If you want to reduce your environmental impact, you should consider growing plants from seed. This is a great way to reduce the amount of plastic that’s used in gardening.''(vizcaya.org) This talks about how important growing your own food is, and the bad things that can happen if you always buy from a non-local store. In conclusion, we should find ways to make our carbon footprint smaller by reusing our leftovers, growing our own plants or buying locally. Because growing your own plants will make you drive less, which will lead to decreasing your carbon footprint, it could help you get out of the house, and start spending more time on your plants then being on your phone. Then with your own grown plants or if you “walked” to your local market. You could make a meal with the stuff you produced. If you happen to have any leftovers you could make a different meal with the ingredients you have left over, or do some research on the leftover plant and see what they have an importance of helping the soil nutrients or how it can help the earth. So you're not only getting out of the house, and not being lazy, but you're helping the earth by recycling the plants in different ways. Leftover meals could help people in need, or even help animals. That's only the basics of decreasing your carbon footprint, because there are alot of different ways that you can help the carbon footprint.