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 >
Family Transportation
After completing my carbon footprint, I was shocked to see that my family's total amount of kgs emitted of CO2 from transportation only is nearly triple the average American's. This is mostly due to the fact that my family travels on airplanes regularly across the United States. In addition, my family consists of four licensed people and three cars, which we all use on a daily basis. Before completing the carbon footprint, I didn't know that our transportation habits made such an impact and I think it is important that my family and families alike begin to focus on cutting back CO2 emission from transportation. It is important to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere like CO2 in order to lower the effects of global warming. I think the first step in this process would be to carpool more. Instead of each person in a family taking each car they own every day, families can begin to take each other to work and/or school to cut back on CO2 emission. Another option to cut back on CO2 emission would be to bike to work or school if it is convenient in the area the family liv es in. In addition to this, families can take less trips that require airplane travel.
It is obviously very important to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere. What other ways can you think of to do this?
Most of my carbon footprint also came from transportation however we don't fly. I was shocked when I learned how high mine for transportation was which brought up my whole average. I think mine was high because we have 4 cars in our family, for my mom, dad, and my sister and I. All of ours except my mom's get bad milage because they are older. We have 6 people in our family so that also takes a toll on it. It brings it up because most of have work, extracurricular activities, etc. I plan to reduce this part of my footprint by cutting out unnecessary driving and driving the car with better milage when I get a chance. How do you plan to reduce yours?
My family is currently planning on trading out at least one of our cars, and I am hoping that we will get a hybrid with better milage. Also to reduce my carbon footprint, I'm planning on walking more places when possible. And like you, I think it is important to cut out unnecessary driving, which I will try to do.