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 Carbon Footprint
When calculating my carbon footprint, I found that my transportation and food was about average and my spending amount was below average, so I was pretty happy with that. Although, when I found out my carbon emissions for my house I was very disturbed. My home emissions were almost triple the amount of the average American! According to Columbia University, a way I can cut down my home emissions is to switch incandescent light bulbs to LED light bulbs. About half of my home's light bulbs are incandescent and I have no LED light bulbs in my house so that is a good way to cut down on my home carbon emissions.
I completely agree. About five or six years ago, my parents and I had become more conscious than ever about the carbon emissions for our house. When we were attempting to drastically reduce our carbon emissions we decided to switch our lights from incandescent light bulbs to LED lights. To maximize our results, we replaced every single lightbulb inside and outside of our house, amassing a total of roughly 50 LED lightbulbs. According, to the Department of Energy, LED lightbulbs "use at least 75% less energy, and last 25 times longer, than incandescent lighting." Furthermore, "Widespread use of LED lighting has the greatest potential impact on energy savings in the United States. By 2027, widespread use of LEDs could save about 348 TWh (compared to no LED use) of electricity: This is the equivalent annual electrical output of 44 large electric power plants (1000 megawatts each), and a total savings of more than $30 billion at today's electricity prices." For this reason, if I were to compare my household carbon emissions from 6 years ago to today, my results would be drastically worse. This just goes to show the incredible impact LED lights can have especially in the long run.
I also agree with both of you in which we should be using different light bulbs. The results of my Carbon footprint was different from you guys. My home and food carbon footprint were only a few hundred then the average which I was surprised to see. My purchases were way lower than the average which was very good to see. Then there was transportation. My transportation footprint was 17x more than the average which was 34,000. My family and I could do many things to contribute to making this transportation footprint diminish. First things, we can start running our errands in one trip instead of going on many trips for many errands. One big thing we can do to make our footprint smaller is to get an electric car. Our family has been talking about getting one for years, but we have not invested in getting it yet. According to Colombia University's article getting an electric car will help contribute to the environment, and help with the emitting of greenhouse gases.
I believe that you all are correct. My house is fairly large, an most of the rooms contain either fluorescent or incandescent lightbulbs. While my footprint was about 4k above the average, the place where I had the most problem was the home energy and transportation. My energy usage was at about twice the average. A big thing that could be done to help this is definitely replacing the lightbulbs with LED alternatives, and not keeping all appliances plugged in. As APeddadaBOD1 said, LED lightbulbs consume much less energy, which is less of a stain on the environment and atmosphere. ADelaCruzBOD7, I would have to disagree with you about the electric car, however. Although they seem like a conscious choice, the electricity they are powered on actually comes from mainly fossil fuels. The best thing we can do is talk to our local government and try to make changes on a level that will help out neighborhoods, or possible towns or cities. Large corporations are usually the ones at fault for such large scale emission of greenhouse gases.