When I calculated my carbon footprint, I expected it to be larger than the norm – my family almost always drives, our house is large and not very energy efficient, and in a house of four people, we eat a lot of food. Contradictory to my assumption, however, my carbon footprint is about 8,744 kg of CO2 per year, as opposed to 9,727 kg for California. Transportation, my second lowest category at 1,377 kg, was saved by the fact that I didn’t go on any flights this past year. However, I know my family still needs to work on taking less flights, considering that my parents took ten work flights between the two of them, and on average, each mile a plane travels releases about 24 kg of CO2. The amount of CO2 that Home, my highest category at 4,320 kg, produces is definitely due to the age of our house. Built in 1965, it still has the original windows, doors, and heating, as well as 66 fluorescent lights, which are notoriously bad for the environment. I’m not sure there’s a way to fix this until we move, since the house is rented, but turning lights and appliances off is a good  way to start. Food was probably the closest category to the region’s average, at 2,505 kg. I’m not surprised that it was a bit higher than the average, but not by much. We don’t eat much beef in comparison to other meats, so I believe that may have been a factor in keeping the numbers down. The last category, Purchases, was surprising to me because of how low it was – 542 kg in comparison to the regional average of 1,191. It may be because my main purchases are e-books, but I thought that what I buy would have more of an impact. I’m also surprised that trash didn’t raise the number. We don’t have a compost bin at home, and while I try my best at school to recycle and compost, I’ll sometimes find myself absently throwing everything into landfill. This is something I need to work on, but can be easily remedied by paying attention. Overall, my carbon footprint is not the worst ever, but there’s still room for me to improve.

I agree that when calculating my carbon footprint, I was surprised by the overall results, yet when thinking further about them, they did make sense. For transportation, I expected my carbon footprint to be much higher, as I drive to and from school every weekday, as well as to singing lessons every Saturday. However, my total carbon footprint was only 419 kg above the average carbon footprint of my region. This, I reflected, was probably due to the fact that I do not often travel far enough to take an airplane. Secondly, the amount of my carbon footprint generated from my home was surprising, as my family lives in a very small home. However, it is a very old home and therefore is not equipped with energy-efficient appliances, such as our water heater, which runs on gas. Plus, for some strange unknown reason, my family does not use a single LED lightbulb in the entire house. Then, my food section was about 1,000 lower than the average for my region, probably due to the fact that my family rarely burns indoor or outdoor fires, and we compost most of our food scraps. Lastl y, my purchases ended up being 167 kg while the average for my region is 1,191 kg. This was very surprising to me, as I do not think about buying products with minimal or no packaging, and I always buy new clothes rather than receiving hand-me-downs or shopping at thrift stores. But, such a low amount was probably because I always bring reusable bags when shopping, use a refillable water bottle, and recycle all packaging that can be, both at home and at school. To reduce my carbon footprint in the area of transportation, I can walk or bike to my singing lessons, as they are fairly close to my house and it is really quite unnecessary for me to drive to them. For home, I can encourage my parents to invest in more efficient appliances, as they do plan to redo the kitchen area of our house soon. Also, I can buy LED bulbs and replace the very un-efficient ones we use. Hopefully by making these changes, I can make my overall carbon footprint much lower than it is.