Saving the Blue Heart

This week, we delve into our own individual contribution to the environment and how even small actions that we are so used to could be damaging the environment and reducing your carbon footprint as you read there. Hence, this article is going to briefly explain everything about carbon footprints. What they are, what increases or decreases yours and how to reduce your carbon footprint.

What is a carbon footprint?

An individual’s carbon footprint refers to the total amount of greenhouse gas and carbon emissions generated by said person. A carbon footprint can be that of an individual, a company, an institution or even a country. It is measured and represented by tonnes of a ‘carbon dioxide equivalent’ or a CO2e.

How is a carbon footprint calculated?

To measure a carbon footprint, all the activities done by the individual or company are considered and the amount of carbon emissions from each activity are finally totaled to get a final number. A low carbon footprint would emit less than or equal to 6,000 pounds CO2e annually. The normal range globally is 4 tons of CO2e per person. A high carbon footprint would be more than or equal to 22,000 pounds of CO2e per year.

The activities that increase your carbon footprint

On a large scale, the burning of fossil fuels and coal for various purposes such as energy generation, forms of transportation such as cars and planes, industrial purposes, deforestation, food production and overconsumption are drastic activities and increase industries’ and companies’ carbon footprints tenfold. 

On a smaller scale, meat in the diet, excessive personal transportation, electronic devices and not recycling have a huge negative effect on the carbon footprint of a household or an individual.

How to reduce your carbon footprint?

Personal and household carbon footprints can be reduced by consuming less meat, carpooling, decrease water and energy use, switch to LED light bulbs and adopt a more green way of thinking. Industrial carbon footprints can be reduced by transitioning to renewable energy sources and reusing and recycling, among other alternatives.

Future constraints and possibilities

According the the Nature Conservancy, to have the best chance of avoiding a 2℃ rise in global temperatures, the average global carbon footprint per year needs to drop to under 2 tons by 2050. Therefore, reducing carbon footprints should be a goal for all of us.