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 >
Carbon Commute Crisis!
My total carbon footprint was much higher than I thought it was. Home, food, and purchases were all below the averages for my region, but transportation was four times the average. This is shocking! I have only taken one round trip to Washington D.C. in an airplane over the last year. The majority of my transportation footprint comes from my school commute. My carbon footprint is greatly impacted by the distance I must travel between my house and school. If I could design my house to reduce my carbon footprint, I would move closer to school. Ideally, my house would be in walking/biking distance of my school. My house is 24 miles or 38.62 kilometers from school. Often, traffic affects my commute. During rush hours, it can take over an hour for me to get to and from school. When sitting in traffic, my SUV continues to add pollutants to the atmosphere. Individual passenger cars consume between 0.03 and 0.07 gallons of gasoline for every ten minutes of idling, emitting 247 pounds of carbon dioxide on average per year. I am sadly well above the average because of traffic cong estion and total distance. My ideal house would reduce my carbon footprint substantially by locating it in closer proximity to my school. Does anyone else suffer from long commutes to school? Is there a way to improve traffic flow like with self-driving cars? Would mass transportation, like in California, decrease my carbon footprint?
Sources: https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/speed-sweet-spot