Do you want to help to have a more sustainable future? If we recently talked about how to consume responsibly, today we want to refer to the carbon footprint. Do you know what it is and how to reduce it? We’ll explain to you! 😉

What Is a Carbon Footprint?

The carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions from the production, use, and end-of-life of a product or service. It includes carbon dioxide – the most common gas emitted by humans – and others, such as methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gasses, which trap heat in the atmosphere, causing global warming! Typically, most of a person’s carbon footprint comes from transportation, housing, and food. 

You can calculate your carbon footprint by thinking about:

• How many miles do you travel by bus, car, train, and plane?
• Your household energy use.
• How much do you spend on your shopping?
• The composition of your diet.

Regardless of the score, you get, here are some things that could help you lessen your environmental impact!

How to reduce your carbon footprint

1. Consume local products

Try to choose to consume local and seasonal products. As they are produced close to where you live and in season, less transportation is used for their production and delivery until they reach you. Imported products must be brought to the place where you are, so they use more transportation, whether by truck, boat, or plane, which emits more CO2.

In addition, by eating local you will be part of fair trade, motivating the economy of your locality! 😉

2. Eat less meat!

In addition to consuming local products, you should eat less red meat.  That’s right, vegan, vegetarian and flexitarian diets are generally more environmentally friendly than omnivorous or carnivorous diets if we focus on current models of large-scale intensive production.

There are several reasons for this, but we can mainly take into account that the livestock industry, or any type of animal destined for the production of meat and by-products such as milk or eggs, is one of the industries that consume by far the largest amount of water. 

You should also know that the gasses expelled by this industry into the atmosphere when it comes to its intensive form on a large scale, both from the factories themselves and during transport. 

And the gasses given off by animals, especially cows, contain a lot of methane, a greenhouse gas, and by themselves in more natural quantities are not an environmental problem, but due to the immense volume required by the world population and supplied by the livestock industry, it becomes part of the emissions’ problem, since we are talking about a gigantic volume of livestock! 

So, it’s better for our health to consume meat in moderation or on plant-based diets, especially if it’s from intensive industrial production! 

3. Use the 3Rs of ecology!

Remember to use the 3Rs of ecology! 

• Reduce what you consume.
• Reuse all the materials you can.
• And recycle as much as possible: you simply have to take the materials to the corresponding containers or to clean points.

4. Reduce plastic in your daily life

Say no to single-use plastic! Plastic production, as well as its slow decomposition in the environment when it’s thrown away without being recycled, are processes that pollute the entire planet in different ways. Minimizing its use will reduce your carbon footprint, reduce soil and water pollution, and prevent the death of many animals and plants 😉. 

To achieve this you just need to stop using unnecessary plastic bottles and use more glass bottles and thermoses that you can use for a long time, as well as stop using plastic bags and always carry with you cloth bags or similar materials, which are resistant and can also be used for long periods. 

5. Use public transport more to reduce your carbon footprint.

Leave your car or motorcycle parked or get rid of them, because individual transport using fossil fuels is one of the main sources of CO2 emissions, although not only of this gas but of various gasses that are expelled in the combustion of these products and that are harmful to the planet to be found in excess in the atmosphere. Switch to electric cars or more sustainable transport, like using public transport, bicycles, or walking to the nearest places. 

For the same reason, we encourage you to reduce your carbon footprint by using renewable energies at home, such as solar or wind energy.

6. Take care of your appliances to reduce CO2

Something else we can do at home to minimize our carbon footprint is to take good care of our appliances, so that they only use the energy they really need and don’t use too much, which is equivalent to spending more energy and money and polluting the environment more. This is mainly the case in most homes because they use nuclear and other similar energy to obtain electricity.

So, you can turn your home into a green home with renewable energy, or you can try to keep your refrigerator clean, use the dryer less, keep your cell phone in good condition, so it doesn’t need to be charged more times, unplug appliances you are not using, and so on!

These are some tips and ideas to reduce your carbon footprint, both individually and more generally. Can you think of more?