Hello. My name is Tatjana. I calculated my carbon foot print on the calculator and my foot print was very large because of the transportation and traveling that I do in my life. I am trying to be more eco-friendly in my daily life and I want to know, is there any other ways to lower the amount of carbon I am putting out in the earth In relation to transportation?

Dear tatjana -- is the major part of your transport footprint from air travel?  When you reply I might have some advice for you - and others probably do as well.

Tajita and Jason, I also noticed that my transportation was way above average, and I was confused because I only take public transportation. I believe my carbon footprint for transportation is so high is because I took four national flights this year, each 3.5 hours on average. This must have extremely boosted my carbon footprint.

Dear Jason Hodin- you are correct. My air travel made a big impact on my transportation portion. Advice would be great.

Dear kp, yes indeed, airline travel is the big part of many peoples' footprints!

Both kp & Tatjana: here is some advice for you:

1) When you fly, see if it is possible to take non-stop flights.  Take-offs and landings use the most fuel in a flight, so the more stops, the higher the footprint. Plus, flight paths with stops are often very out of the way (e.g., flying from San Francisco to New York via Atlanta), adding many excess hours of flying and thus a higher footprint.  Sometimes non-stop flights are only a few dollars more expensive than a one-stop itinerary, but with a much lower footprint.

2) On a similar note, what I usually do when I travel overseas is to find the cheapest non-stop flight to get me anywhere close to my destination and then from then on travel by public transport.  For example, when flying to Europe, I often fly direct to Frankfurt and then take the excellent European trains to my final destination.

3) Look into long distance trains as an alternative to flying at all.  I am lucky that I can afford the time to travel by train, but I get a lot o f work done while traveling by train.  I therefore take the train to the East Coast of USA from Washington state 1-2 times per year (3 days in the train) and several times each year take the train from Seattle to San Francisco (1 day on the train).

The views from the train are beautiful, and it's a great way to travel if you have the time.

These strategies keep my transport carbon footprint relatively low even though I travel a lot!

Finally, you can look to "offsetting" your travel footprint with other actions, like hanging your clothes to dry, eating less meat or riding your bicycle to school.

Good luck!

Jason- thank you so much for the advice. I will definitely try to use these as much as possible.