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 >
My Family Footprint
I currently live in 2 houses, due to the fact that my parents are divorced, and this leads to the large consumption of food, water, and electricity. With a total of 5 people living at my moms house and 6 at my dads, lights being left on to 20 minute showers are a commonality. Although my families carbon footprint may be slightly above average, there are lots of ways to prevent and reduce our carbon footprint.
My family has a relatively low transportation contribution due to the fact that we don't use air travel often, and we tend to ride in the same car as much as possible. Not using airplanes or long car rides are huge helping factors to reduce overall carbon footprint.
As for food, this category may be a little higher. My family eats, buys, and wastes food almost everyday of the week. Granted, lots of our food is bought locally and has low food miles. But with lots of food comes lots of waste. We have a garbage disposal at one of my houses so that eliminates the abundant amount of trash bags and waste. We could definitely do more to buy locally and organic. Some habits we have do benefit our society and community, but some steps can be taken to improve our carbon footprint.
As for our home, this category for my family may be high. Lots of times we either accidentally leave lights on or take long showers. This category would make up most of our total average. Taking shorter showers, turning lights off all the time, and turning the heat down in the summer can all help my family have a smaller carbon footprint.
As for purchases, our family doesn't like to spend lots of money on new clothes or items. In this area, we are slightly below average. We do buy new clothes, but hand-me-downs are often given to us, which cuts down our average carbon footprint. There are certainly ways to help make this even lower.
My family certainly realizes the effect they have on our world, especially after I mentioned this project. The awareness of climate change and the prevention of the release of CO2 are the steps my family, my community, and our world need to take to help change our world.