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 >
Reducing My Family's Carbon Footprint
I live in a house with five people and I know that our carbon footprint is not low. First of all, we all use a lot of water. I know that if we were to cut our shower time by even a few minutes each day, this would make a very big difference, Also, although we have solar paneled lights, we waste a lot of energy by keeping them on when we are not even using them. If we set a house rule to turn off all lights before exiting a room, we will be saving a lot of energy. In the winter when it gets cold, we do not turn on the heat very often. Instead, we will layer up and stay warm using clothes and this doesn't waste energy to produce heat. This is the only energy reducing task I can say that I am proud my family takes on. Other than that, I have started noticing more and more when I am doing things that are bad for the environment. I will try to motivate myself and my family to cut down on their carbon usage and save out resources, and if everyone did this we could make an enormous difference for our environment.