Tips to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

Global Warming is a real crisis, buying green tags and carbon offsets is only part of the solution. We need to start reducing the amount of activity that creates excessive carbon pollution and other greenhouse gases such as methane.  Here are a few tips to help reduce your carbon footprint.

Home

• If you don’t need it, switch it off at the wall. Appliances running on standby consume a great deal of unnecessary energy.
• Take shorter showers.
• Turn down your heat and air conditioner.
• Recycle
• Seal and insulate your home properly.  By reducing drafts and air leaks you can reduce your carbon footprint.  Regular maintenance to ensure windows are properly caulked and weather stripping is in place will go a long way.
• Make energy efficient choices when buying appliences or purchasing a new furnace or air conditioning system.
• Set ideal comfort levels.  Don’t set your thermostate too high…or too low.  By installing a programmable thermostate your can help ensure energy efficiency.

Travelling

•  Remove unnecessary weight from your vehicle in order to cut down on fuel consumption emissions.
• Check tires; the number one fuel consumption issue is caused by improper tire inflation.
• Use public transportation whenever possible.
• Cut out short car trips; Cars release the most emissions when cold. Plan your shopping to make one or two short trips every week.
• Whenever possible, avoide carbon emissions completely by walking or riding your bike.
• Keep at the speed limit: speeding is unnecessry and will increase your carbon footprint…and also put a dent in your wallet.  Speeding reduces your vehicle’s milage by up to 33% and will waste gas and your money.

Shopping

• Try to source your food locally. Some foods have to be shipped thousands of miles in order to get to your supermarket, increasing emissions.
• Count down on red meat. The livestock industry produces millions of tons of methane (a greenhouse gas) into the air.
• Consumerism plays a huge roll in the release of emissions into the air. Before buying something, ask yourself if it is a necessity.
• When purchasing always keep green in mind.

Offset

• While we can’t be 100% organic or always use locally produced items, purchasing carbon offsets and green tags can help offset carbon dioxide emissions.

While fighting pollution is definitely a struggle. The above listed tips can help you to reduce your carbon footprint, in hopes for a cleaner air in the future.