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's Carbon Footprint, Especially Through Transportation
While calculating my carbon footprint I found a common pattern that I'd have a lower score than the average for my area. I was quite happy about that until I got into the Transportation section. In it it asks for your number of flights to and how much distance was traveled. My family normally goes on about 3 to 4 vacations across the country or occasionally out of the country. Needless to say my "score" skyrocketed after that and grew to be much larger than the average carbon emissions for our area. I live in America which has been notorious for its carbon emissions and a lot of that comes from the industry and the burning of fossil fuels for electricity. After some research ( Link below ) I found that transportation makes up more than a quarter of the US' emissions and is also a larger factor than the industry and electricity separately. This has lead me to believe that cutting down on unnecessary flights could be a huge help to the earth as a whole. I do understand by the way that the Transportation category includes travel through automobiles. Though honestly I think that my argument still applies as air travel is still a major part of this category.
Not to sure how to link. Sorry about that. Still is below.
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/source … -emissions