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
My family’s carbon footprint was mainly influenced by transportation. Although our purchases and food were below average and our home was slightly above, our overall transportation was over double the average family according to the International Student Carbon Footprint Challenge. We have relatives all over the world, our farthest living in Portugal. In order to visit them as often as we can, we choose to fly there twice a year. The number of flights add up, which makes our carbon footprint expand by a lot. Although my family mainly drives an electric car when we are driving around the city, we take our gas car when we have to go on long road trips. Before I took the survey, I knew that we already traveled a lot, but I was surprised at how much above average our total CO2 emissions were. My family is trying to go vegetarian to limit our carbon footprint in the food section. According to State of the Planet, you can reduce your carbon footprint substantially if your limit or cut out your beef consumption. We are trying our best but are still trying to figure out how to limit our carbon footprint in transportation while still allowing us to visit our family. Any suggestions?