Have you ever considered how your daily activities affect the planet?
Do you consider your actions mostly positive or sustainable?
Take a few minutes to think about these questions now and let’s review them again after reading this article.
What is a Carbon Footprint?
A carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gases (including carbon dioxide and methane) that are generated by humans.
Carbon footprint measurements require a deep analysis of our activities and the lifecycle of products we use day today.
What does that thought process look like?
Consider the milk you put in your cereal each day. Does this come from a local source or from somewhere far away? Where do you collect your milk from? Do you walk there or is it a car ride away?
Using this example, your carbon footprint is the sum of all CO2 emissions that were created from start to end of this process:
- Transportation of milk from farm to the grocery store
- The use of your car to collect milk from the store
- The petrol consumption to power your car to get to the store
- And lastly, all emissions associated with the production of the consumables described above!
Your ecological footprint is a measure of your impact on nature’s resources. It calculates the amount of natural resources used against the availability in nature. For example, a measurement of how many hectares of land are needed to establish and operate a dairy farm to satisfy the needs of the population.
Where do Greenhouse Gas emissions come from?
Transportation and Energy sectors account for the highest Green House Gas emissions. When we consider this from our day-to-day perspective, our residential emissions are mostly in the form of transport and unconscious shopping, cooling and heating of our homes and energy we use around the house.
In summary:
Be the change you want to see in the World.
As with any habit, small daily efforts make big changes in the long run. If you are able to practice one tip above each day you will make a difference in your local community.
Let’s consider those questions we saw at the beginning of the article again:
Which of your daily activities can be adapted to positively impact the planet?
Can you make small changes to live in a more sustainable way?
