I find it fun to complete online surveys and quizzes so here is a little tool I found that made me more aware of my impact on the Earth on a day-to-day basis as well as on a broader scale: http://www.nature.org/initiatives/climatechange/calculator/. For example, I should work harder to turn off lights when they are not needed, use cold water when doing laundry, compost my food and unplug any appliances when not in use. A big impact of mine that raised my greenhouse gas emissions significantly was transportation (about half of my emissions). Although I do not own a car and rarely even ride in other people’s cars while at Oxy, I travel across the country to come to school here. I make multiple long flights during the year to attend Oxy and for my own personal travel.
Overall, I was disappointed with my results because I like to think that I care to do my part and be green. It was interesting to see my estimated emissions compared to the average American and compared to the world average individual. As expected I was in the middle with a score of 20 and the U.S. average at 27. I would expect the world average to be lower but was surprised at how much lower it was at only 5.5!
I encourage you to take the quiz and assess your carbon footprint. I challenge you to decrease your footprint and set goals of how you can go about doing so. What can we all do more or less of to lower our CO2 emissions and help the environment?
The first step to maker the world a greener place is to start with yourself and change your habits. Then you can set an example for others and encourage them to do the same. I plan to start a compost box in my house and persuade all my housemates to compost their food scraps.
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Good way to bring our issues to the personal level. Eating meat less frequently will help. Some people offset flights since its hard to travel long distances any other way. When I worked in D.C. I had a colleague from Czechoslovakia who had taken a boat from Europe to the United States for this reason, but that's eccentrically committed.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting this link! I remember doing this in high school - I can't remember what the class average was, but I remember I was lower than others since I'm vegan, regularly compost my food (at home), eat mostly organic, and am generally conscious about energy and water. As a result, I thought my total would still be pretty low here - even though I can't compost, I'm still OCD about recycling, use cold water when I do laundry, etc. But the flights really bumped me up - I was still at 19 :( I can't really do much else to lower my score while at Oxy, since I already do what they've suggested - but that would be awesome if sustainability groups and/or students on campus could advertise about this carbon footprint site, so that other students can calculate how they're doing here. My guess is that most would be really surprised at how detrimental their lifestyle is to the earth! Ideally, something like this will help people to shift their lifestyles towards sustainability!
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