5 things you can do to easily reduce your carbon footprint

Your carbon footprint is the amount of greenhouse gases you are responsible for releasing into the environment, expressed as a number of CO2 equivalents. This number gives you a rough idea about how much you are responsible of the climate change we are all experiencing these days, and generally speaking people in rich countries such as USA and a lot of countries in Europe has a very big carbon footprint. An average American household releases 50 tons of carbon dioxide equivalents yearly, which is five times higher than the global average.

So, in this post I want to share a few tips to help everyone reduce their carbon footprints. You don’t need to strictly follow all of them, but if everyone improves a tiny bit, we can actually reduce the speed of the climate change, and every small bit helps.

1) Be aware of the emission from consumer goods

Consumer goods such as electronics, stuff you place inside your house, clothing etc. are very bad for the environment. By not including food as consumer goods, these things are responsible for as much as 29 % of all the greenhouse gases, mostly due to them being produced at the other side of the globe (where lots of emissions are releases) as well as the transport to the other side of the world.

In order to reduce your carbon footprint from consumer goods, consider buying used goods as well as selling the ones you don’t really use anymore. There is really no good reason not to sell your old iPhone; you get some money, and the buyer gets a phone that is much cheaper than they would have to pay for a new one. And the climate gets a win as well!

If you are throwing away electronics, make sure to recycle them. The process is probably a lot different in the different countries, but here in Norway these have their own recycle points where the metals from the goods gets reused.

2) Consider eating a bit less meat and dairy

Both meat and dairy has a very high emission compared to most other foods. A lot of beef you buy gets produced in places like Brazil, where rainforest has to be cut down in order to provide a grazing habitat for the cattle. In addition to this, the trophic energy loss from going higher up in the food chain is significant (I should probably make a post about this soon), so eating vegetables and plant-based food is a lot better for the climate than meat and dairy products.

I am definitely not saying that everyone should be a vegan, but if you are more aware of the climate problems from meat and dairy, you might want to try eating vegan or vegetarian products once or twice a week. This is not enough to save the rainforest, or the climate, but a small change can also have a big impact if a lot of people start doing it.

Cattle like this Beef Shorthorn needs a lot of energy before it can provide meat, roughly 10x the energy needed for plant-based food. Image by Cgoodwin, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

3) Try to reduce your use of cars

The extreme use of cars are also one of the major problems that lead to climate change. Not only are they very emission-heavy to produce, but using petrol to drive produces a steady release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In order to deal with this problem, people should consider changing into a hybrid, electric or another vehicle that releases less greenhouse gases than the average car.

Another way to help the climate is to reduce the amount of short rides. This is especially important for places where there is a cold climate, and this is due to the fact that the car releases more NOx before it gets properly heated up. This means that the short 5 minute rides to the grocery store is very bad for the climate, and if you are able to, walk there or take the bus. Even a small change in this area will really help the climate!

In addition, you can help the climate simply by making sure your tire pressure is correct, and reduce extra weight in your vehicle. This will save you petrol, and therefore also money, while also reducing the stress on the environment.

4) Buy local food

As said above, food is a big part of the climate change, and buying food that has been produced locally is a lot better than buying food that is made on the other side of the world. This reduces the amount of greenhouse gases that are released when the food is transported for a long distance, and while doing this you will also directly support farmers in your area, which could probably use some support!

5) Turn off electronics that are not currently used

Make sure all the electronics are completely turned off when they are not used. This will reduce your consumption of electricity, and if a lot of people do this, the demand for electricity is reduced, so less coal and other non-sustainable energy-sources are used for electricity. This tip might not be applicable to everyone, since some countries have 99%+ renewable energy, but most countries are not that fortunate.

So turn off the AC, TV, lights and everything when you don’t really need it, and you will also save some money in the process!

Thanks for reading

Thanks for reading my 5 easy tips to reduce your carbon footprint. I don’t expect anyone to do major changes in their lives, but if we all are more aware about how much carbon dioxide equivalents we release, we might all do at least a small part to better ourselves. Got any more tips? Share them with the rest of us in the comment field!

About the author

Hi, I’m @valth! I live in Norway with my girlfriend, our newborn son, and our two dogs, one of which is seen wearing a bow tie in the profile picture!

I am very passionate about nature and biology, and have been studying ecology for a few years now. My passions are mostly within conservation biology, mycology (the studies of mushrooms), animal behavior and general microbiology. I really enjoy both the theoretical aspect, as well as the more practical aspect of biology, and I spend about as much time in front of biology textbooks as I do spend on finding and identifying plant, mushroom and animal species in the forests.

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