Best Strategies to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

An average day for most people includes driving to work, cooking meals, taking a shower, and using the computer. Another thing these activities have in common is that they all contribute to your carbon footprint.

What is a Carbon Footprint?

Carbon footprints are a representation of an individual’s carbon dioxide emissions over a specified period (usually a year). The manufacture of products, extraction of fuel, or transportation of goods negatively impacts our carbon footprint.

There are both direct and indirect sources of emissions in the carbon footprint. Direct sources are those directly attributed to an individual, while indirect sources are those attributed to a country or production process.

How to Calculate Your Carbon Footprint

An individual’s footprint is a measure of how much strain the environment is under. The following information will help calculate your carbon footprint:

- The number of miles you travel by plane, train, bus, and car

- The amount of energy you use at home

- How much you spend shopping

- Dietary composition

We need to act on two fronts to halt climate breakdown: move from a fossil-fuel-based economy to a low-carbon one and protect our best natural allies, which store large quantities of carbon in forests, grasslands, mangroves, and tidal marshes.

Every individual, industry, and country must reduce their carbon footprint to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and ensure an environmentally friendly planet.

How your Carbon Footprint affects Climate Change

In our atmosphere, carbon dioxide traps heat from the sun and the Earth’s surface. High concentrations of greenhouse gases, specifically carbon dioxide, are associated with burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests, raising the average surface temperature of the planet to intolerable levels.

Climate change scientists estimate that current atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are the highest they’ve been in 14 million years. They have risen more than 40 percent since the middle of the 18th century.

Climate change will have a cumulative effect — increasing ocean acidification, food scarcity, mass species extinctions, raising sea levels, more intense storms, and greater economic inequality — as carbon dioxide levels continue to rise, temperature increases.

Why you need to Reduce your Carbon Footprint?

After all this discussion of carbon emissions and footprints, you might be wondering why you need to reduce your carbon footprint. When compared to governments and big businesses, what impact can one individual make?

It is evident and extreme that greenhouse gas emissions are linked to climate change. Increasing temperatures, more severe extreme weather events, rising ocean levels, and acidification are all contributing to global warming. Human activity is responsible for these ecological threats.

You can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and foster an eco-friendly world by reducing your carbon footprint. Making small adjustments can lead to big results in the fight against climate change.

There’s more to it than just being environmentally friendly. You can also benefit by saving money and living a healthier, eco-friendly lifestyle when you reduce your carbon footprint.

You also contribute to climate change and become environmentally conscious by reducing your carbon footprint and sticking to earth friendly products, whether through cleaner air, a healthier diet, or lower energy bills.

How can you Reduce your Carbon Footprint

To become more eco conscious, you can make a few tweaks to your eating, shopping, and home maintenance habits; this will in turn reduce your carbon footprint.

Everyone in your family can easily adopt these changes. At EcoLivingHive, we are always striving towards increasing our sustainability efforts – which includes reducing our carbon footprint.

1. Eliminate diary and meat from your diet

Choosing a vegetarian or vegan diet is one of the best ways to reduce your carbon footprint and become more eco-friendly and environmentally sustainable.

Farm animals produce enormous amounts of methane. Additionally, they cause the release of greenhouse gases through feed production and land maintenance.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, livestock contributes 14.5 percent of all greenhouse gases generated by human activity worldwide. After lamb, beef is the second-highest producer of greenhouse gases when compared to other meat sources.

2. Control the heating system

Taking control of your heating is the first step in reducing carbon emissions and being eco conscious. To reduce your carbon emissions and take up sustainable initiatives, ensure you don’t overuse heating.

Modern, easy-to-use controls can help you ensure you’re only using heat when necessary. Some examples include thermostatic radiator valves, a timer or programmer, and a room thermostat.

Smart heating controls are available for all types of heating systems (including electric storage heaters). By automating certain functions, the heating can be turned on and off precisely when needed.

3. Take fewer flights

Do you fly frequently? Your carbon footprint could be significantly reduced if you took one fewer long round-trip flight. Using public transportation often may still be relatively sustainable, while flying frequently will result in higher emissions.

One way to offset the emissions caused by flying is to donate money to sustainable projects, such as supplying efficient stoves to rural households or helping farmers sell crop waste for fuel.

4. Invest in appliances that use less energy

Choosing energy-efficient and eco-friendly appliances is one straightforward way to reduce your carbon footprint. Insulating and changing the way we heat our homes can also go a long way.

Small changes to your habits can reduce your energy use and carbon emissions. In addition to regular use, choosing eco modes, lowering temperatures, and drying clothes on a line will reduce energy consumption.

To reduce your home’s carbon footprint and ensure a zero-waste lifestyle, choose earth friendly products and appliances with high energy efficiency ratings that meet your needs and budget.

5. Get your home insulated

Our homes emit additional carbon dioxide due to the energy they consume. Heating accounts for more than half of your home’s energy use, so you should insulate your walls, roof, and floors to reduce energy waste and carbon footprint.

If you have a hot water cylinder, you can insulate it, along with any exposed hot water pipes. Your home will be warmer in winter, your energy bills will be lower, and your carbon emissions will be reduced if the building is insulated.

An uninsulated home loses around a third of its heat through its walls, so you should start by insulating them. Insulating walls differ by the type of home you have: homes built after 1920 have cavity walls, whereas older homes have solid walls.

6. Seal up openings against draughts

A gap around your windows, doorframes, floorboards, or chimney may cause your home to lose heat. Saving energy and reducing carbon emissions can be achieved by draught-proofing these areas. Many times, there is no need for a professional to do this.

7. Recycle and reuse

Every product we buy has a carbon footprint. When a product is made and shipped to you, some carbon emissions will probably be released in the process. Reduce your consumption of products at home to reduce emissions.

You can reduce the amount of waste going to landfills by buying recycled products and recycling your own used items. Don’t throw away old clothes, jars, and cans, and repair furniture rather than throwing them away.

8. Use energy-efficient lighting

Home energy efficiency and eco-friendly living is largely credited to lighting. By using an LED lighting, you can reduce your carbon footprint and electricity costs by 80-90%.

The carbon dioxide emissions from your home could be reduced by 65kg a year if all your bulbs were replaced with LEDs. Approximately 220 miles of driving produce this amount of carbon dioxide.

9. Reduce waste

According to estimates, an average person wastes around 40 percent of their food. Fortunately, you can reduce food wastage by using the following simple solutions (and you’ll also save money):

- Make a list: Keep your fridge organized so you can see what you already have, and make grocery lists before you go shopping so you don’t buy unnecessary items.

- Don’t buy in bulk: If you don’t eat low-priced food before it goes bad, it’s not a good deal.

- Have a plan: Prepare only as much food as you can consume. Adapt recipes to your needs, taking into account the number of people eating.

- Be creative: Instead of throwing away leftovers, reuse them.

- Refrigerate: By freezing your food, including additional portions and fresh herbs, you can extend its shelf life.

10. Conserve water

The process of processing and delivering water to our homes consumes energy and resources. Heating it is also quite energy-intensive and increases our carbon footprint.

Using less water reduces your carbon footprint and helps the environment. Consider taking short showers rather than long baths, and boiling only the amount of water you need when brushing your teeth.

11. Invest in renewable energy

There are now greener energy tariffs offered by energy providers around the world. Renewable energy sources are eco-friendly and can play a major role in reducing your carbon footprint.

To save money on energy bills and reduce your household emissions, opt for a company that offers solar, wind, or hydroelectric power. If solar panels are available in your area, you could even install them.

Many energy providers are offering “green electricity” tariffs nowadays, which promote renewable energy. If you want to ensure your electricity supply is 100% renewable, you should look for one that purchases a mix of renewables and non-renewables.

12. Rethink your means of transportation

We release 13% of all greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation industry, second only to the meat industry. Although we would like to completely abandon transportation, it’s not as easy as going vegetarian or refusing single-use plastic.

For at least the next five to ten years, most of us will be dependent on fossil-fueled transportation, generating unavoidable carbon emissions. To reduce our carbon footprint, we must reduce and rethink how we travel.

Here are some ideas:

- Instead of driving for five minutes, could you walk, run, or cycle?

- Whenever you are at a traffic light, in a traffic jam, or waiting for someone, turn off the ignition.

- Do you have access to public transportation? Nowadays, public transportation is convenient and economical.

- If you commute to work or run the school run, might you be able to car share?

- Can you reduce your flight schedule? Could there be a cleaner alternative, such as a train?