new year, new goals to change your carbon footprint
- malloryhersh
- Jan 3, 2024
- 2 min read
Click the link above. Fill out this quick calculator it will take 5-10 minutes.
This Carbon footprint calculator is provided by United States Environmental Protection Agency that gives a quick rough estimate of your carbon footprint. Our everyday actions, like using electricity, driving, and managing waste, contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, forming our household's carbon footprint. This tool gauges this footprint across three categories: home energy, transportation, and waste. Since factors like location, habits, and individual choices vary, everyone's carbon footprint differs.
Why do we care?
We care about our carbon footprint because it directly impacts the health of our planet. Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere, leading to global warming and climate change. By changing small habits thus helping reducing our carbon footprint, we can help mitigate these effects, preserving the environment for future generations, protecting ecosystems, and ensuring a sustainable future for all living beings. It can also lead to cost savings (IN THIS ECONOMY, yes!), energy efficiency, and overall improvements in quality of life.
With University of Michigan, I'm taking this course on Act on Climate: Steps to Individual, Community, and Political Action. The course goes over how our personal decisions such as energy consumption, food choices, and transportation choices can affect the climate and how we can help influence policy from the chairs of our own home by attending virtual community meetings and identifying divestment organizations to help volunteer with.
The course is like all about giving us the power to make a real difference on climate change, you know? It's not just about what we can do on our own, but also how we can come together as a community and even get involved in politics to tackle this huge problem. It's all about realizing that we're all connected in this and that our actions, big or small, really do matter in the fight against climate change.
One thing that we can start doing in our own homes is being more cognizant on energy consumption, decomposing vegetable/fruit peels to help reduce waste, and maybe taking on #meatlessmondays.
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