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 >
Ways to reduce my carbon footprint
I found that my family's carbon emissions were much higher in the Home and Transportations categories, almost 3,000 kgs above average in each. I noticed in the transportation section, the part that contributed the most to our emission was our air travel. The best way to reduce that is by not traveling as much, although I am not sure my family would be will to give that up as we travel a lot. However, another part that contributed a lot to our footprint was consistent travel, like cars. No one in my family has an electric car so we could reduce our footprint to switching to renewable energy. In the home section, the part that contributed the most was the heating method (my family heats our house with gas/fuel oil). A few ways we could reduce our footprint in that category is by heating our home for fewer months out of the year, as we do not really need heat in the summer, especially during the day. The Carbon Calculator suggested renewable energy to power homes, such as solar. I believe there are some complications with my roof, however, so solar panels may be more difficult to implement.