A practical guide to a greener lifestyle (Part 1): what is a carbon footprint?
Plastic waste islands floating on the oceans, melting icebergs in the Arctic, photos and videos of animals entangled in plastic bags, bees dying off– we know that our modern lifestyles are not environmentally sustainable.
The way this slowly but steadily unfolding disaster is covered by the media makes us think that even though it’s really sad to watch the world die, there’s not much we can do. Right?
WRONG!
There’s plenty of things we can start doing straight away to minimise our impact on the environment and lower our carbon footprint. As informed consumers, through simple activities and everyday decisions we can increase products’ lifespan, reduce waste and put pressure on businesses to push sustainability up their agenda.
But first things first – what is this carbon footprint? In simple terms, carbon footprint is a way of measuring greenhouse gases' pollution. It is not the only kind of pollution, but has the most severe impact on climate change. It can be attributed to a country, an industry, a person or even a single product or service. Calculating carbon footprint can be pretty complicated and requires some accounting skills and knowledge of environmental sciences. However, there’s plenty of publications that estimate environmental impact of different industries, products and services.
[Source: BBC]
But what about you? Have you ever wondered about your own impact on the environment? There are tools which allow you to assess environmental sustainability of your lifestyle. For instance, the WWF Footprint Calculator is a good starting point. It will give you an idea about where your carbon footprint is coming from and some basic tips on what you could do to reduce it.
[Source: WWF]
We, however, want to bring the game to the next level. Over the next couple of weeks, we will be posting a series of articles focusing on practical advice on how we can all make more sustainable decisions as users and consumers, so that we don’t end up living on a dumpster planet. We will cover topics such as:
- Energy: how to make your electricity bills lower and “greener”?
- Transport: how to make your daily commute more environmentally friendly?
- Food: how to reduce food waste in practice?
- Waste: what to do with that old phone in your drawer and TV in the basement?
These are some of the topics (but not all, of course) that we plan to cover to help you live more sustainably and feel better about yourself and the planet.