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As the world nears the climate change tipping point, learning how to reduce carbon footprint is becoming increasingly important on both a personal and collective level.

While politicians wrestle with the question “ is climate change?” and debate the causes of climate change, most people can clearly see the harmful impact these changes are already having on the environment and seek out sensible solutions.

In the meantime, while we each strive to find ways to reduce our carbon footprint, the planet is getting hotter, its storms more severe, its record-breaking floods, devastating hurricanes, and brutally intense heat waves that drain the water supply and change insect life cycles.

Unless you’re a head-in-the-sand climate change denier, the impacts of climate change are pretty obvious. At this point, all you really need to do to see them is watch the weather report or note how global temperatures have risen dramatically in recent years.

Our search for climate change solutions leads us to two important questions: is carbon footprint, and how can you reduce your carbon footprint? Here we’ll help to answer both questions, providing actionable steps ranging from basic lifestyle changes to buying carbon offsets and creating a more READ MORE: Can the Maritime Forest Survive Climate Change? 

HOW TO REDUCE CARBON FOOTPRINT (1 WAYS)

is Carbon Footprint?

to Reduce Carbon Footprint With Lifestyle Changes

Ways to Reduce Carbon Footprint at Home

to Use Carbon Offsets & Carbon Credits

is Carbon Footprint?

Calculating carbon footprint is a way of measuring the mark an event, organization, person, or product leaves on the environment. You do this by examining how much carbon each action releases, and quantifying it in terms of carbon dioxide equivalent. 

Some scientists define carbon footprint as “the measure of the total amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) emissions of a defined population, system or activity, considering all relevant sources, sinks, and storage… Calculated as carbon dioxide equivalent using the relevant 100-year global warming potential (GWP100).”

Calculating this number (originally known as ecological footprint) is decidedly complex. For instance, when you

From the READ MORE: Ted Turner on Saving the World With Alternative Energy

  to Reduce Carbon Footprint With Lifestyle Changes

“Plant-Based Dishes, Raw Food” by ella.o, licensed under CC BY 2.0

1. Reduce Your Food Carbon Footprint

The way we eat is having a dramatic impact on the climate. One of the worst offenders is mass-produced meat. Not only does keeping animals in factory farms make their lives miserable, but it has a horrendous effect on the environment.

When animals can’t roam freely, they’re unable to eat naturally by grazing. We now grow millions upon millions of acres of animal feed in order to raise these caged animals.

Even worse, we’re using water to grow the feed, water for the animals, gasoline to power CO2-emitting machines that plow and harvest the fields, and more gasoline to move the feed from the field to the factory farm.

Unfortunately, the list of negative environmental issues associated with factory farms grows longer. Forced into ridiculously close quarters, animals are more prone to disease, so they require antibiotics and other medications. Their waste, which carries all those drugs, is concentrated and ultimately READ MORE: A Guide to Ethical Eating When You Travel

2. Reduce Your Waste Footprint

Nearly a third of the greenhouse gas emissions in the United States come from resource extraction, manufacturing, transportation, and disposal. This statistic includes packaging. When we lakes

, as well as using incredible amounts of fossil fuels to mine metals and minerals.

With each product we dispose of, we increase the amount of garbage, which inevitably finds its way to landfills that are releasing greenhouse gases. Then the new products we replace them with require packaging and shipping, thus using another collection of resources.

So in order to reduce our CO2 footprint, we must learn to value the things we buy. We have to buy READ MORE: 1 Ways to Reduce Waste

Consignment Shop by Hebi B. from Pixabay

3. Lower Carbon Footprint By Buying Secondhand

Once you learn to reduce waste in your own home, you can also work towards a lower carbon footprint for others.

Many people look at online shopping as an opportunity to get whatever they want whenever they want. But smart shoppers know it’s also a great way to buy things secondhand.

Secondhand products are a sensible choice for our budget as well as our carbon footprints. Not only does buying secondhand mean that we aren’t having to tap the planet for more resources, but we’re also avoiding the need for more packaging. That spells responsible shopping.

Many items are easy to find secondhand, at reduced prices and often higher quality than new products. FreeCycle. They’re also easy to find at thrift stores.

Shopping secondhand is a great way become more CO2 neutral. In times when everything is so easy to get with the click of a button, it’s easy to forget the price the planet pays for convenience. Learn to shop smarter, be patient, and find what you want without getting it brand new.

READ MORE: to Save Money for Travel by Buying Secondhand Gear

Electric Car by MikesPhotos from Pixabay

4. Reduce CO2 Emissions by Driving Smarter

In an ideal world, we’d all have access to reliable, affordable public transportation. But the fact is that most of us in the USA don’t. Unless we live in a large city, odds are we need a car for every adult in the house. That’s just the sad state of our national infrastructure.

Nevertheless, we still can reduce CO2 emissions by traveling more responsibly in and around town. Even if we can’t READ MORE: The World’s Best Road Trips

. Buy Carbon Offsets & Consider Slow Travel

If there’s one thing we understand here at Green Global Travel, it’s the insatiable urge to get out and see the world.

Of course there are countless ways we can air travel has an abysmal carbon footprint: Aviation accounts for 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions. One round-trip flight from 4.3 billion people traveled by air in 2018– an increase of 38 million over 2017– which caused the overall demand for jet fuel to rise by 3% at a time when we’re desperately working on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. 

In other words, READ MORE:  is Ecotourism? The History/Principles of Responsible Travel

  Ways to Reduce Carbon Footprint at Home

Bret & Mary’s Permaculture Garden

1. Grow Your Own Vegetables & Fruit

Growing food in your own home garden is as locally-sourced as it gets. When you plant and nurture your own herbs, fruits, and vegetables, you get affordable, organic, non-home garden has to be some sort of complicated or time-consuming thing.

We can grow fresh herbs on the kitchen windowsill. We can grow salad greens in pots on the patio. We can plant climate-appropriate fruit trees in the backyard. We can cultivate berry hedges along fences and, yes, we can READ MORE: Permaculture Design Principles (12 Steps to a Productive Garden)

Rain Barrel by ramboldheiner from Pixabay

2. Reduce Your Water Footprint

If you remember your high school chemistry, you know that water does not contain carbon. It’s H2O: two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. But getting water to our homes takes a tremendous amount of energy, and dealing with gray- and black-water requires even more.

When we turn on the tap and water flows effortlessly, it’s easy to forget how much effort went into getting it there. Water has to be sourced from somewhere, pumped to somewhere, filtered and sanitized, then moved along to our homes. Hot water on demand requires energy to heat.

Reducing our water footprint has been a common goal for decades. As a child in the ’80s, I was urged to turn off the tap while brushing my teeth. We knew back then what our rampant water waste was doing, and we know even better now that the planet is facing an increasingly urgent water crisis.

The real culprit behind the majority of home water waste isn’t dental cleansing. Toilets account for about a quarter of our household water consumption. Grass lawns are notably as bad, requiring copious irrigation to keep them green and growing. The plethora of appliances we now rely on (dishwashers, washing machines, etc.) account for a lot of waste as well.

Water conservation solutions are totally realistic. It’s a matter of buying low-flow taps and toilets, growing home gardens instead of lawns, choosing water-efficient appliances and using them responsibly, and making use of gray water—not fresh water—for things like irrigation. The trick lies in actually doing it!

READ MORE: Water.org Fights the Global Water Crisis

“Joe’s DIY Solar Panel Install Taken by Joe” by Dave Dugdale is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

3. Reduce Your Energy Footprint with Renewable Energy

As with water, we’ve become accustomed to flicking light switches, plugging in laptops, and having instant power. It’s been this way for so long now that we as a society have forgotten that electricity was a rare luxury less than 100 years ago.

Fossil fuels—coal, disastrous environmental impacts, and even cheaper  than fossil fuels, and it’s a great way to do our part in fighting climate change.

The last couple of centuries have been a guiltless grab for power, but the next century is going to find us running out of fossil fuels and having done irreparable damage to the planet. So do us all a favor and switch to renewable energy however you can, as soon as you can.

READ MORE: Al Gore on Climate Change & Renewable Energy

Passive Cooling by Lars Eriksson from Pixabay

4. Use Passive Heating & Passive Cooling

First-world households (even “green” ones) often forego minimizing the amount of energy we need. In fact, heating and cooling our homes accounts for around 0% of the energy we use.

In truth, depending on where you live, the ambient temperature outside is generally comfortable for at least half the year. ever, we’ve become accustomed to controlling our indoor temperatures with extreme precision. Many of us no longer take advantage of pleasant days.

We don’t wear appropriate READ MORE: Arctic Activist Sebastian Copeland on Global Warming

Clothesline by Alina Kuptsova from Pixabay

. Create a More Energy Efficient Home

Many of us already own homes that we’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to make them more energy-efficient.

There are many simple solutions for retrofitting homes that were not designed to be environmentally friendly, which can both conserve energy and save us money long-term.

Many of these fixes don’t even require major construction. Adding better insulation around leaky houses will keep the cool in during summer and out during winter. Installing Energy Star appliances (particularly water heaters) can also make a huge difference.

Many little inexpensive changes can compile to make a notable difference as well. Putting up a clothesline instead of using an energy-hogging dryer is good. Switching to energy-efficient LED light bulbs saves a lot of energy and money in the long run, particularly for an entire household.

Of course, we can also add solar panels where appropriate. There are a variety of programs that allow us to feed energy into the grid and get discounts, rather than trying to power the entire house with solar.

READ MORE: to Audit Your Home for Energy Efficiency

  to Use Carbon Offsets & Carbon Credits

Farmer’s Market by Alina Kuptsova from Pixabay

1. Use an Ecological Footprint Calculator

The first step towards going carbon neutral is to use an ecological footprint calculator (a.k.a. carbon footprint calculator), which is available for free from numerous sources online.

These calculators take users through a series of questions that help them determine the approximate number of pounds of carbon they use each year. It’s both an eye-opening process as well as a means of getting a firm grasp on where to work on improving your personal efforts.

The questions typically cover several facets of life we’ve discussed here, including your automobiles, air travel, home energy use, waste production, and dietary habits.

Each of your answers helps provide the program with a rough guesstimate of the carbon emissions you create each year. Most of us who live in the industrialized world lead lifestyles that would require several Earths to support them.

Here are 10 different online ecological footprint calculators to try: Global Footprint Network, Terrapass, CarbonFootprint.com, EPA, The Nature Conservancy, Carbon Fund, Ecological Footprint, Earth Day, and READ MORE:

Carbon Offsets Infographic courtesy of Terrapass

2. Buy Carbon Offsets

Once they learn their carbon footprint, some people like to buy carbon offsets to balance out the amount of carbon they put into the atmosphere.

While it’s vitally important to take the aforementioned steps to reduce our individual carbon footprints, buying carbon offsets (or carbon credit, in the case of corporations) is way to ensure you’re truly living a carbon neutral life.

So what is carbon credit? Carbon credit is a consolidated way to make monetary investments to help with the reduction of carbon emissions on a global scale.

Carbon offset programs allow individuals, companies, and governments to purchase offsets that invest in renewable energies, energy efficiency, reforestation, and similar ventures in order to counteract their own carbon emissions.

It’s important to understand that a carbon tax is not the same thing. Carbon taxes are levied on companies that create an abundance of carbon, and are not optional. But, like carbon offsets, they help to thwart climate change by financing READ MORE: Eco-Friendly Initiatives That Will Change the World

3. Do Business with Eco Friendly Companies

Often we aren’t given green options when choosing the companies with which we do business. Large power companies in particular seem to have a monopoly, leaving little to no eco-friendly choices in the areas in which we live. 

ever, that isn’t to say that we can’t make the effort. READ MORE: to Choose An Eco Hotel

4. Support Passionate NGOs

Finding NGOs focused on protecting the environment is easy, but narrowing down the ones you’d like to support can be hard.

Along with making changes at home, you can reduce your carbon footprint by supporting these organizations, whether it be with time, money, or promotion.

NGOs are working for the same reductions we’ve discussed here, but with a larger, collective ecological footprint. Supporting that work is almost as important as doing our own part at home.

If those of us who can afford the time and/or money each chose just one NGO to support, these organizations could do their work much faster and with more resources at their disposal. This work affects the entire planet, and time is increasingly of the essenece.

Here’s a list of 10 environmentally-focused NGOs to check out: The Climate Reality Project, Global Footprint Network, EarthShare, Environmental Defense Fund, Carbon Trust, Ceres, Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, and GreenBlue.  

READ MORE: The 20 Best Environmental Charities & Animal Charities

. Live Carbon Neutral

Ultimately, with all of the information we have co;lected here, it’s possible to begin living carbon neutral today.

We can buy carbon credit to offset our less-than-green lifestyles as we transition ourselves into more responsible homes, cars, appliances, and energy production. We can invest in our future, both through direct action and through donations to envioronmental NGOs.

In other words, we already have the power to use less power.

We have the power to start making individual changes now. We have the power to set examples for our out-of-whack governments. We have the power to support companies that care about the planet as much as profit. We have the power (and tools) to hold ourselves accountable.

And it all starts at home, with the way each of uses power! –Jonathon Engels; video by Simpleshow via CC BY 3.0 license