My family's footprint is way too high, does anyone have any ideas on how I could lower it?

You can lower your family's footprint by conserving energy, carpooling to school/work, recycling plastics, and eating more meals with less meat. Some ways to conserve energy are using solar panels, turning off lights in your home, and using less AC and heaters. Carpooling to school/work may be difficult, but using public transportation like buses and trains is always an option. Traveling by airplane is the worst way to lower your footprint. I recommend taking fewer trips via airplane if possible. The process to raise cattle and other animals releases a ton of co2 into the atmosphere. By eating fewer animals the demand for them will degrees, and with the demand decreasing the need to raise so many animals will also decrease, and the amount of co2 released into the atmosphere will decrease. All of the recommended ideas may be tough to get used to at first, but you will be doing your part in reducing the amount of co2 released.

Although there is not much I can actually do to change my families footprint I try my best to change little things about our daily life. I would try and reduce the amount of ziplock bags used for food and change to reusable containers. A study showed that Americans throw away around 100 million plastic bags each year. Another thing you can try is switching your soaps over to bars of soap instead of using bottles you have to throw away each time. But overall, just doing little things like making sure your lights are off when you leave and trying to use reusable things can help a lot.