Lowering Your Carbon Footprint

Green this, green that, hybrid cars, green living, green house gases, what does it all mean? There’s a lot of talk lately of the environment and what we can do to help make this world a cleaner, better place to live. Now how does that impact my little world? And why am I writing about it? Because it impacts my little world, Your little world and our big world.

What exactly is a carbon footprint? It is measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of green house gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide. This impact must be considered in cumulative terms. Think of the ripple effect of a rock thrown into a pond. Everything we do contributes to our individual carbon footprint and continues having the effect even after we are done with the activity and in most cases, before and then after we use different products. Driving our car is the most obvious offender, but even turning on a light bulb increases our footprint. The electricity used to power even something as basic as a light bulb has to be produced, and doing so increases pollution.  We have to stop and consider the consequences of the production of most of the everyday things we use and then reset our minds to grasp the concept of how our behavior or what we buy impacts the earth.

Most of us feel that there is nothing we can do, “I’m only one person what difference can I make?” A huge one, and here’s some proof. If every American home replaced just one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year, more than $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of more than 800,000 cars. One CFL (compact fluorescent lamp) can reduce 2000 times it weight in greenhouse gas over the life of the bulb. (I know there’s mercury in the bulb and you can’t just toss it in the trash, recycle it!) There are many, many more ways to reduce your CO2 output, and I encourage you to read up and discover for yourself the different ways you can help our earth heal, it’s really pretty fascinating.

So, why do I bring this up? Pretty simple actually but sometimes we forget the basics. We all breath, especially when we work out, so the cleaner our air is, the cleaner our lungs, the cleaner our bodies, etc., etc. We all need to take the necessary steps to clean up our earth, it’s the only one we’ve got, and it’s loosing the battle. If we loose, we loose everything and not just for us, but for everyone who comes after us. So start looking at the microcosm of everyday behavior and find simple ways where you can make a difference. If each and every one of us does, we’ll all be “bringing it” for centuries to come.