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
If I had my own energy efficient, sustainable home, I would want a small home, in a medium sized city. I would want to live in a place that had transit buses and ways to get around other then cars. I would live in an apartment, with solar panels for electricity, and a garden for vegetables. I would eat locally grown food, and keep track of small things like turning off the lights and taking short showers. I would recycle and compost my waste. All of this would help bring my personal carbon footprint down a lot.
This sounds great--super sustainable and independent. I think this is the dream for a lot of people; no all however. If you total up the impact each country has total causing Global Warming, you can see how much we need more thinkers like you. Places like Chile have a total count as 61760, Egypt with 78350, and Ghana with 71278. These are big numbers! Bottom line, we need to spread awareness about these numbers along with the many other places around the world. We need to get people to see that yearning for and trying to get a sustainable life like the one you described IS POSSIBLE. Many people assume that an individual can't change the direction the earth is headed, but even a change of mindset gets us off to a much needed, late, head start.
I agree with you completely on all of this. I live in a fairly small rural town, and we have a substantially eco-friendly community. However, many people do emit a vast amount of CO2 just through light bulbs being on. Your idea of solar energy is a great alternative, and, like you said, even small changes can make a very large difference!
I think this all sounds like a great idea, using less resources while also having the ability to do more good can go a long way. There definitely are plenty of ways we can help positively contribute to the environment such as solar energy, which you were discussing. Car pooling, recycling, and flat out conserving our resources can make a huge difference in the world.
I agree with you guys with going less and having sustainable resources. I've been looking into the tiny houses, especially the ones with solar panels and the rainwater collectors. A tiny house would be ideal for saving on cold and heat as well.
I wish there were buses that serviced my area. That would save me a lot on gas money and make transportation all around easier.