Go Green- Reduce Your Carbon Footprint
Posted by Bryan Lauer, LEED AP in GoGreen on 17-01-2009
Why is Carbon Footprint so important? Carbon Footprint, aka GHG (greenhouse gas), is directly related to Global Warming! If actions are not taken right now to reduce our Carbon Footprint we are setting up future generations for potentially impossible tasks. Reduce your Carbon Footprint and you will reduce Global Warming. It’s a fact!
Reduce your Carbon Footprint to help “Go Green”?
When asking yourself this question one must understand:
- What Carbon Footprint means/is;
- What your Carbon Footprint consist of;
- Calculate your Carbon Footprint, then
- Work on reducing it.
Carbon Footprint is “the total set of GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions caused directly and indirectly by an individual, organization, event or product” (UK Carbon Trust 2008). In Lehman’s Terms it is the amount of emissions you produce directly (gas (cars, planes), coal (tranes, houses) or nuclear energy (electricity), to name the most common) or indirectly (public and financial services, car manufacture and delivery, furnishings and recreation and leisure). Wikipedia is a great resource to learn and understand most everything about Carbon Footprint.
There are many resources to calculate your Carbon Footprint. Click any of the following sites to calculate your carbon footprint, it will take about 2-5 minutes. Try to be as accurate as possible.
- www.b-e-f.org/offsets/?gclid=CL3VwfqQnZgCFQu-GgodGwZmoA
- www.carbonfootprint.com
- www.nature.org/initiatives/climatechange/calculator/
Once you know what your Carbon Footprint consist of, you can work on reducing it to help Go Green. Strategies to reduce your Carbon Footprint include: driving less, buying less, taking less plane trips/vacations, turn your A/C off (or lower) when you leave for work, carpool, utilize public transportation opposed to using your private vehicle, ride your bike, walk, purchase only essential items, purchase items that use recycled content, reuse items as much as sanitarily possible.
Overall Practice being Conservative. This will help you reduce your Carbon Footprint and Go Green!
-Green Man
[...] What does all this mean? It means the government is trying to save the world by reducing the deadly affects carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases cause. To learn more about these deadly gases click here: Reduce Your Carbon Footprint [...]