Have a vasectomy; take the pill! Until the world's population stops increasing so much then reducing carbon is a waste of time, as increasing numbers of people will simply replace the carbon that you might have saved - and occupy more land that farmers and wildlife need.
By not buying Chinese made products.
Soda and beer bottles used to be glass here and used many many times, before they was recycled to bottles again.
Now both are plastic or ALU/plastic cans, which i do not know how it is reused, but i think they are not, so back to the chemical factory after 1 use.
As everyone know a ALU can have plastic inside, or your soda or beer would taste god awful.
I promote and encourage the use of nuclear power.
That question doesn't really suit me, because I could answer it two ways, and the answers would be "Nothing" and "Everything I reasonably can" respectively.What steps do you take to reduce your carbon footprint?
That difference is in the difference betwern
to which I could reply "pretty much nothing,.What steps do you take to reduce your carbon footprint?
and, to which the answer is everything I reasonably can.What steps do you take that reduce your carbon footprint?
The difference is that one question is about motivation and the other is about effect.
Putting that another way, I do a lot that does reduce my (our, self and wife) carbon footprint, but not necessarily because it reduces it. Either way, on that "nifty calculator" (which I think is far from nifty, by the way) I ended up at 63% of the 2020 target, or 6.6 tonnes. Which puts me significantly ahead of the game in my carbon footprint, even if much of the motivation wasn't about reducing my carbon footprint.
For instance, I'm entirely (bar one fluorescent which is on my hit list) entirely LED lit, but the motivation was that having gone CFl largely on cost grounds, I find them a pain in the behind, and switched to LED because I MUCH prefer them. I.e. it suited me.
Contrary to that, though I've looked long and hard at EV's, we haven't done it because despite it reducing my carbon footprint to do it, because I can't find a model that suits me needs.
The result is a pretty low footprint, but it wasn't in order to reduce my footprint.
Similarly, we eat a very high percentage of locally produced food, because of quality and taste, not for ecological or planet-saving reasons. Those of you that don't do this are seriously missing out, and it usually doesn't need to be expensive either. And not only does it taste better, but you can feel virtuous about your carbon footprint too, if you like.
I look pointedly and disapprovingly at people sitting parked in their cars with the engine running. But that isn't /my/ carbon footprint.
+1 for this +1Originally Posted by LeetyMcLeet
+1 this
Well, I don't step in ashes much, and I stay at home most of the time, and...
Just kidding. About the ashes, anyway. But I did make my last desktop build a mini-ITX and limited myself to components that would fit in a smaller power envelope. Admittedly, I think I still put a 450W supply in there, but it's my first attempt at making something moderate instead of the best and fastest I can afford.
Also, I'll be looking at BEVs next time I can afford to replace my car. Surprisingly, keeping my old car (20 years next month) may be okay for the environment, even though it doesn't have great mileage, because the damage from strip mining all the raw materials that long ago gets amortized over a longer period. In the long term, though, as we move to greener sources for electricity production, batteries make a lot more sense even with the initial resource cost. If I had solar panels on my house that would be even better, and next time I move I will think about it. We don't have good public transport options where I live (no buses in my suburb, even, and I'd have to drive a few miles to the light rail stop, etc.) or I'd be happy to make use of those. (Again, something that will influence where I live next.) I don't even consider commercial rideshare, though, at least for now: while private rideshare with coworkers would make sense, someone who has to do it for their job is going to burn a lot of fuel running between fares, or to places where they hope they will be near fares, etc.
My family tries to buy food grown locally, and we also try to eat less beef and meat in general. But I file that under trying to eat things that are better for us, not trying to make some kind of environmental impact. I'm not sure that a small farmer in his diesel truck driving 60 miles to a farmers' market is better for the environment than a factory farm where stuff gets harvested and loaded onto giant trucks and stored in warehouses and then grocery stores, even if they start from hundreds of miles away.
Do I even need to mention things like LED lighting and preferring reduced packaging for everything? I think the local single-stream recycling is mostly greenwashing, but it's my only practical option here. We've had a few attempts at composting and will probably make a few more before we give up. And we don't do any harsh chemicals in our yard -- we have feral hares (and therefore hawks and...) in the neighborhood, and surprisingly, the neighbors aren't trying to kill everything off, either.
All that, and I'm still 128% of target, according to the calculator.
Use public transport.
Absolutely nothing!
In fact I go out of my way to increase my footprint to offset against all the hippies out there!
Nothing. CO2 isn't bad for the environment, in fact it's actually amazing for the environment. The ones that need to stop wasting so much resources in general, NOT for CO2 reasons are the elites who fly on private jets, fly on helicopters, have private yachts, own 10 cars, etc...
Those and governments who keep on buying weapons and waging wars which are one of the biggest contributors to CO2(not that its bad, but still).
+1 for the 2 +1
I believe that the biggest impact I have on my carbon footprint is by not having children. I also work from home and keep my personal mileage down to a minimum. We've also very recently dropped down to sharing one car between us instead of trying to have one each.
I try to recycle as much as possible, turn everything off when it's not being used, not use the heating when it's not necessary, do the washing at a lower temperature, buy everything I need for one week's worth of food in one go instead of topping up every day. And we try to be as clever as possible with what food we buy so we don't waste any, particularly trying to buy vegetables that aren't packaged in any kind of plastic.
Loads of little things can add together to make a difference but I think not having children will be the biggest impact I can possibly have.
Having said that, we are currently saving up to buy either a Hyundai i30 N or a Honda Civic Type R, which aren't very economical at all, so we're not perfect!
I've done all the easy stuff. Switched to LEDs, new efficent boiler, recycle etc. Wish it was more affordable to do more. I've got a 4 year old diesel I cannot afford to replace with electric vehicle (bought it second hand just before VW dieselgate and demonising of diesel) and I don't think our house is a good fit for solar (East/west facing so you'll only get generation for half the day.)
Will keep doing what I can for my kids future but its hard when the system is still so against going green.
im doing nothing till china / india get it under control.
Ive had solar panels and Tesla Powerwall installed this year.
New build PC seems to use a lot less juice also :-) but then has that increased my footprint considering how much carbon goes into building new parts etc
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