Students from around the world calculated their class mean and standard deviations for their footprints and posted them on our world map.
Do you see differences across the globe? If so, why do you think those differences exist?
Did you use the calculator to try to reduce your footprint down to the average from a citizen of another country? What changes would you have to make to lower your footprint in this way? Are you going to try and take some of these actions in your daily life?
Student Footprints >
Buy Food Locally
One very efficient way you can reduce your carbon footprint is buying locally grown food. If people shopped more in their area and bought more fresh produce from local farmers or factories, they would reduce their food carbon footprint by preventing people from going through the struggle of transporting goods everywhere far away, releasing less CO2. A study showed 11% of emissions that are around food are from transporting food from where it was grown to where it is sold. Refrigeration of these foods as they are being transported adds a lot more CO2 to the environment as well. Local food often times has less packaging as it doesn’t need to be shipped as far, also meaning there does not need to be as much refrigerating. Buying locally sourced food also helps reduce the amount of plastic and packaging used, because they often don't need to have it packaged if it's local.
I would love to buy food locally!