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 home, I'd install LED lights, low flow shower heads, solar panels to power my house, instead of AC, I would use ceiling fans, and more. My house would be somewhere sunny and I'd live close enough to my school/work that I could bike there. I would also try eating using a plant based diet (whether I live alone or not). I can't imagine that it's easy and I don't think I would get used to it right away but eventually I think I would.
I'm a vegetarian and it reduced my carbon footprint drastically. But when I'm able to live on my own, I'd like to cut out dairy and eggs as well. If you slowly start and cut out one type of animal produce at a time that would definitely help. But living with family is impacting how much control you can have over your carbon footprint, which can be less then ideal. Once you can live on your own you can reduce your impact by a lot if you take the steps to do so.