Reducing My Carbon Footprint

I have been thinking a lot lately about my impact on the planet and how I can reduce the effect I have on the earth. I want to share with you the steps I will be taking this year to be more earth friendly.

 I started looking at my carbon foot print and how I could reduce it with small changes. Carbon foot print is describe as the impact an individual has on the environment in a year based on the amount of green house gas you produces due to burning fossil fuels. A carbon foot print is measured in units of carbon dioxide. Greenhouse gasses are emissions at earth’s lower atmosphere that trap energy from the sun preventing it from leaving the planet atmosphere. The heat trapped by these gases is what causes global warming. You can check you carbon footprint here .You may be surprised at how high it is, I was! Here are my results.

One of the biggest and easiest changes I will be committing to is not using plastic bags from retail stores. Did you know that in 2007, 100 millions barrels of oil were used to produces plastic bags. I carry a reused able shopping bag in my purse at all times. I also carry them in my car for grocery shopping.

In my home simple changes I can make on a day to day basis are instead of rinsing dishes before loading the dishwasher is to scrap plates in the garbage. Rinsing dishes can use more water then the entire wash cycle. We only run the dishwasher when it’s full and always after 8pm to avoid peak energy times.

We have also switched to recycled toilet paper; I was surprised to learn that if we all switch out just one roll of toilet paper, to recycle paper we could save 400,000 trees in one year. I had trouble trying to find out just how many trees it takes to make one roll of toilet paper, but I did learn that on average we each use 35 rolls of toilet paper in a year.

Many of you are a head of here, but I have committed to recycling. My condo just introduced blue boxes which make it so easy for me to recycle. Up until this point I am embarrassed to admit everything went in the garbage.  Living in a condo mean no storage and the storage I do have is not for recycling. I have no excuse now. How many of you are using your blue bin ?  The City of Calgary is hoping that the  blue bins will reduce the amount of garbage in the land fill by 80% by 2020. It may be an ambitious goal but I will do my part to help reach these goals.

Do you think about your carbon footprint? If so what kind of changes are you making reduce your footprint and effect on the earth?

Elysse Bulloch

Simply Stylish Staging