Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

Once you have understood that greenhouse gases are accumulating to cause a dangerously high greenhouse effect and that we are all partly to blame and how you calculate your carbon footprint, or even the fact that you have a carbon footprint (go back and read my piece on What Is A Carbon Footprint) we can now discuss ways we can begin to reduce our carbon footprint.

There are two main ways that you can attack the size of your carbon footprint. You can make plenty of lifestyle changes that directly affect the amount of energy you use. Here are a few suggestions, some of which we are all familiar with, others may not have occurred to some people. The crazy thing with a lot of these tips are that they will actually save you money…and not just a little bit of money in some cases but significant chunks of the stuff.

• When you leave a room, turn off the light.
  
• Turn down the central heating by 1 degree.
  
• Hang your washing on the clothesline rather than use your clothes dryer.
  
• Every once in a while (or even every day) do the washing up in the sink rather than running the dishwasher.
  
• Turn the water heating setting down by 1 degree.
  
• Organise to car pool to work with someone who lives nearby.
  
• Walk the kids to school if you live locally.
  
• If you don’t do it already, recycle all of your cans, bottles, PET plastic and paper.
  
• Eat fruit and vegetables you've grown yourself.
  
• Buy locally grown fruit and vegetables.
  
• Buy fruit that is in season.
  
• Use recycled copying paper.
  
• Reuse a canvas shopping bag each time you go shopping.
  
• Cut your shower time by two minutes.
  
• Replace light bulbs with energy efficient fluorescent bulbs.
  
• Unplug your stereo if you're not using it.
  
• If you're not using your iPod charger or cell-phone charger, unplug them.
  
• The next time you buy a car, make it a hybrid.


• Switch to green electricity if it's available.
  
• Keep your tyres properly inflated.
  
• Buy products with minimal packaging.
  
• Install a low-flow showerhead.
  
• Insulate your home - walls and ceilings.

There are over 20 tips on how you might reduce your carbon footprint here, but it is by no means exhaustive. We live in an increasingly throwaway society and this fact leds us to becoming increasingly wasteful which only adds to the problem.

At the start of this post I mentioned that there were 2 ways we can reduce our carbon footprint. I have only given you the way it may be reduced immediately in your personal life. The second way is to offset your carbon footprint, possibly a concept that will be a harder sell to the general population because most people would see it as having to pay for something in which they will get nothing back, which is of course a completely wrong attitude to take. The level of greenhouse gases will not be reduced without everyone's help and even the smallest change in lifestyle will have a global impact on the greenhouse effect.

The subject of offsetting your carbon footprint will be the subject of another post but if you check some of the links at the top of this post you should be able to find some more information about calculating and reducing your carbon footprint.