Carbon footprints

What is a carbon footprint?
A carbon footprint is one way to measure the amount of greenhouse gases our activities cause. These greenhouse gases impact the climate and are usually measured in pounds of carbon dioxide (CO²) emissions. Two major components that mostly cause this footprint are transportation and electricity, because they use most energy. We get energy from burning fossil fuels (like coal, oil, propane, natural gas), which emit greenhouse gases that cause the planet to get warmer.

Daily activities impact our carbon footprint:

Even our daily simple activities require energy. The food we eat, like meat and wheat needs nitrogen fertilizers and cause methane (N²O, CH4 green house gas) to plant and produce them. The use of equipment, transportation of food, processing and packaging of frozen foods (use of plastic) all produce CO². Clothing we wear requires energy to make it, and for transportation and electricity. We must understand that higher income countries have a higher carbon footprint, while poorer lower income states cause less CO² emissions because they can’t afford expensive fossil fuels.

How can se reduce this carbon footprint?

We need to be aware of how our daily choices impact this carbon footprint, and try to reduce this large footprint we leave behind. There are many ways in which we can try to emit less CO²: reducing energy use (finding ways to reduce and save energy like turning off lights, eating organic food), reuse (reuse books instead of buying new ones), recycle (recycle paper, plastic, cans instead of buying new ones that will require more energy to make), and try to walk and plant more trees instead of having concrete in college.

What do we gain from this?

Reducing the carbon footprint has many advantages like improving our quality of life, and stabilizing climate change for us and for future generations. We need to make clever choices that use less energy in order for us to help in creating a better environment.