Students from around the world calculated their class mean and standard deviations for their footprints and posted them on our world map.
Do you see differences across the globe? If so, why do you think those differences exist?
Did you use the calculator to try to reduce your footprint down to the average from a citizen of another country? What changes would you have to make to lower your footprint in this way? Are you going to try and take some of these actions in your daily life?
Student Footprints >
My Carbon Footprint and how I can reduce it
Before I used the carbon footprint calculator. I thought my carbon footprint was going to be average. I don't fly very much, I only took 4 flights in the last year, and I didn't think everything else was going to be exceptionally high besides my house. But I was very surprised by the results. I had one of the highest carbon footprints in the grade with 33,864 kgs. My number was 11x more CO2 than an average human in the world. I am determined to figure out how to reduce this with things such as my home, transportation, food, and goods. My home had a significantly large CO2 footprint with approixemently 20,000 kgs of CO2 produced every year. When my family bought the house it already had many high CO2 producing machines like air conditioning, and heat control systems. My family can try to lower this by using fans and opening windows more instead of having the temperture controk systems on all the time. I have 7 members residing in my house so this number also comes from just how much energy we need to power a home with that many people because my house is on the larger side. My family of 7 produces a lot of garbage with lets out CO2 so we can also try to compost and recycle as much as we can to reduce that. The biggest CO2 producer in my home is a large number of lightbulbs. In my home, I had just under 200 lightbulbs. This is something we cannot change but we can make sure we turn them off when not in use to reduce energy loss. The next biggest producer of CO2 for me is transportation which I had approximately 10,000 kgs. I am a student-athlete so I am needing transportation from my guardians every day to fields for practice. Some of this, I cannot change because I need to get to school and practice but I do have some ways I am reducing this. To get to school on days I do not have morning practice I use the city bus for transportation to school. I also have a carpool for one day a week for soccer practice, this reduces how many cars are used but also makes it easier on my family. But what made up the largest amount of CO2 was flights. Last year I took 2 international flights to the UK to visit my family. It is a very long strenuous flight that had a large amount of CO2 being produced from it because it was a extremely large two-story Boeing aircraft. I also took many many road trips last summer where I went all around California. One way, I can decrease this is by using my family hybrid car instead of our gas one and then using one car instead of 2 which is what we have done. I had a relatively average food CO2 footprint of 2,000. There is not much need for reducing here but I can always try to eat more vegetarian and vegan meals because the meat and dairy industry produces lots of CO2. As for shopping, I do spend a lot of money on clothes each year. So I can also try to thrift shop more to reduce fast fashion which produces a lot of CO2 from the factory producing clothes.
Even before I calculated my carbon footprint, I knew that I would have a higher average than most citizens in the United States. However, it was in areas that I did not expect. Specifically, the categories of home and food. One of the biggest contributors to my higher carbon footprint was how my family and I heat our house. Even though we only use it for 4 months, we heat our has by gas/fuel oil. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, commercial/residential heating is one of the biggest factors of contributing to greenhouse gases. My family and I can decrease the amount of greenhouse gases we emit by instead of heating the house, we can use blankets or jackets to keep warm and only using the heater if it is freezing even when we have blankets or jackets on. However, the heating system in my house is not the only thing to blame for my high carbon footprint. My consumption intake is also to blame. After analyzing my results, it turns out that my food consumption is high due to how much meat I eat. According to the University of Michigan's Center for Sustainable Systems, meats contribute to 56.6% of greenhouse gases the are released into the atmosphere. If I reduce the amount of meat I consume, I will reduce the amount of carbon I emanate into the atmosphere. If I follow these steps that I mentioned in this paragraph, I will be able to decrease my carbon footprint.
Link to 1st Article (United States Environmental Protection Agency): https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/source … -emissions
Link to 2nd Article (University of Michigan's Center for Sustainable Systems): http://css.umich.edu/factsheets/carbon- … -factsheet