When I calculated my carbon footprint, I was surprised to see that my home produced more carbon than my transportation, food, and personal purchases did put together. At first, I thought that this was just because I live in a larger house, but then I started becoming aware of all the things my family does that really increase the size of our carbon footprint. Our main problem is light bulbs. Not only do we have a total of 226 light bulbs, all of which are incandescent instead of the more environmentally-friendly fluorescent light bulbs, but we also leave a lot of them on for almost the whole day. When I have my own house, I’ll definitely make sure to use fluorescent light bulbs and try to get my whole family to turn off the lights whenever they walk out of a room. Light bulbs might not seem like they’re a very big deal, but it’s really the little things that add up to make a big difference. To learn more about the difference between fluorescent and incandescent light bulbs, you can go to the website below.

I was very suprised at how much my home affected my carbon footprint. I thought my transportation would cause the biggest increase in my carbon footprint, but it was my house that did. Since about 3rd grade, I’ve always tried to turn my lights off and conserve water, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve slacked off a little bit. I realize that my parents keep the house pretty cold at night and during the day since it gets so hot here in Texas, but that is not good for the environment. I also use a lot of energy to keep on my television on even when I am not watching it. My siblings even leave their lights on even more than I do which is really bad. I did some research and found the best ways to lower my carbon footprint from my home.
1. Reduce the use of electrical appliances.
2. Turn lights off when they are not in use.
3. Replace standard light bulbs with low energy equivalents.
4. Turn faucet off while brushing teeth.
Here is a link to look at more ways to reduce your carbon footprint around your home.

Other Benefits of Buying in Bulk:

Instead of buying new bottles of hand soap every time you run out, what if you bought the larger bottles that are used to refill the empty containers? By doing this, you’ve cut down on cost by buying in bulk, you’ve purchased one large bottle that will supply possibly eight refills instead of wasting money and plastic on buying the small individual ones, and you may have prolonged a trip to the grocery store thereby saving gas. I researched a local store’s pricing on the individual containers verses the larger ones. To my surprise, the smaller ones cost more, and this is for the same product! The 64 oz. bottle cost $3.68 whereas the 7.5 oz. bottle cost $3.72. In the larger bottle each ounce of soap costs about 6 cents, whereas in the smaller one, you’re paying almost 50 cents per ounce! So, instead of buying and recycling 8-9 bottles, you could buy one larger bottle, save money and plastic, and possibly make less trips to the store. This same principle could be used in other areas as well for other household purchases which would cut down on frequency of shopping trips. This would reduce your carbon footprint in the areas of gasoline burned and packaging used.

I think my family does a relatively good job at keeping out carbon footprint low. My family isn’t big on recycling, but we do many little things to help keep the earth clean and spend less. My father doesn’t like when we throw food away. My dad tries to make our house for eco-friendly. We have siding on our house that keeps the house more insulated. O ther simple things my family does is, turning off the water when we are brushing out teeth, turning off the lights when we leave, and we don’t go out to eat as much as the average family. I think taking simple steps will be very useful in trying to lower you carbon footprint.

When I calculated my carbon footprint, my home produced the most carbon by far. If you think about how much energy you use through out the day, you might be shocked. I realized some of the things I was not thinking about twice were making a big impact on the enviornment. For example, I tend to let my computer charge overnight. This is bad because my computer is using more energy than it needs since I don’t turn it off. when it has enough energy I also am not keen on turning off lights I’m not using. Another thing I tend to do is turn the fan on when I’m sleeping even if I don’t really need it. These small components make a big difference when you add them all up. Here are a few tips I researched that will benefit the enviornment!
1. Don’t keep the faucet running while you are brushing your teeth
2. Turn the lights/TV/computer off when you are not using them
3. Don’t throw away items that can be recycled (ex, paper,plastic, cans, cardboard)
I posted a link that gives great ways to benefit the enviornment!

Recently, I calculated my carbon footprint. One of the things I found most shocking was the amount of carbon my family and I produced from our home. From things like running the air conditioner all day to leaving our computers on, I realized that there are so many things that we can change just by pushing a button or flipping a switch that can preserve our planet and recources. When I was putting in the data for my carbon footprint, even before I got the actual calculated numbers, something that really made me think about the energy we use is how many lights we had in our house, and how long each of them were on. We leave on so many lights that no one uses aroung the house, and it is EXTREMELY careless. In addition to that, I did some research on the type of lights in my home. Most of our light bulbs are what is called Halogen. Original Halogen bulbs can be energy efficent, but lots of people have halogen tubes, which waste energy by creating four times more heat than the average incandescent bulb. Since this, I have been more conscious of what light bulbs we use, and I make it a habit to turn all the lights off when they are not needed.

Our school calculated our carbon footprints last week, and I thought that my footprint would be rather high since I live in America. My transportation was a lot lower than average, but my home footprint was above average. Our family usually goes on plane trips once every 2 years, and we only take car trips that take about 4-5 hours, which is probably why we have a low transportation level. We also use CFLs for almost all of our lightbulbs, do not recycle that often, and we have a family of six, which explains the home level. Our family is going to take small steps to become greener, and are starting with recycling more things. I looked up what was recyclable on the web, and I realized that there were more things I could have recycled than I realized. I posted a link below for a list of recylcable items.

After calculating my carbon footprint, I noticed that a significant amount of the carbon I produced is from my home. While it was still lower than the average human in my state, I knew that if I didn’t act now then it will continue to get higher. After knowing about that I decided to do some research to try and lower the amount. I soon came across an extensive article on the TLC website about “How to Conserve Energy at Home”. It contains many easy tricks on how to save energy in different rooms in your home, different seasons, etc. Since it was pretty overwhelming to try and perform every single one, I started off by conserving energy through my thermostat. Any time the difference between the outside temperature and the inside temperature can be reduced by even one or two degrees, it makes the heating system come on less often, less fuel be burned, and lowers your utility bill. The body will adjust and socks and sweaters aren’t too hard to use in the cold weather that is fast approaching. Also, closing rooms that are not in use helps to reduce the areas that your heater/ air conditioning system have to heat and cool. I’ve never heard of it before and it seems really easy for trying to conserve energy, don’t you think?

As we enter this holiday season, the idea of Christmas comes to mind. For my family, it is fun to wrap presents together. When I was thinking about it, I thought of an alternative to using wrapping paper to wrap gifts: using gift bags. This alternative will save time and simultaneously help the earth. By using gift bags, whoever you give the gift to will be able to reuse it for something else. I think that this is a great idea that does not take much effort, yet still benefits the earth. Another great idea to help the environment this holiday season is with the decorations. During Christmas, most people like to put up lights and decorations. This Christmas, my family will put up non-light Christmas decorations to reduce our family footprint. We may put up some lights, but the lights that we do put up will be LED’s, which save energy. By researching on http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1220_041220_green_christmas_2.html, I found that the U.S. Department of Energy did a study that found that if everyone replaced their conventional string lights with LED’s, a minimum of two billion killowatt- hours of energy would be saved in a month. This is an astonishing amount of energy that could be saved by merely switching out your lights. By taking these earth- friendly steps during this holiday season, my family’s carbon footprint will hopefully decrease dramatically. Here is a link that has great ideas of how you can be green this holiday season. Do you think you and your family could do some of these things?

There are many ways to reducing my carbon footprint such as not using the AC and heater when I don’t absolutely need it. Another way is to change the lights to CFL, but most of my carbon footprint came from traveling and house usage. So here is a typical example of what the average person does when they arrive in the hotel. You check in and enter your room. Once in the room, the temperature might be adjusted, the lights are turned on in every corner, the TV is left going, and all the free toiletries are scoffed up. Well maybe instead of doing all these things you could not take all the toiletries, reuse your towels, and not get your bed done every single day that you stay there.