Many students using our footprint calculator said that they could not pledge to reduce their home footprints because they were not making the decisions for the household. Here is your chance to design your own sustainable virtual household!
If you had your own home, what would you do to make it more energy efficient? Where would you get your electricity from? Where would your house be? Would you live near to your school or work or local transit options? Where would you get your food from?
MY Family Footprint >
Reducing Your Family Footprint
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.