Actions to Take to minimize your carbon footprint

What can you do to minimize your carbon footprint?

There is plenty you can personally do to reduce your impact on the climate. Here are a few of the easiest things our climate allies and partners have suggested that really do add up to make a big difference. If you have any other ideas, please comment below.

1. The Three Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Try buying less, and reusing and fixing things when you can instead of buying new.
2. Buy organic and local. There’s a better chance the food was grown in an eco-friendly way, and if it’s locally grown, it didn’t have to travel that far.
3. Pay attention to packaging. When out shopping, try to go to stores that keep packaging to a minimum. Also, take reusable bags to the grocery store.
4. Ditch bottled water, which has a huge carbon footprint (bottled in one location, shipped to many others)
5. Energy-proof your home. Think about small upgrades: make sure all of your windows close properly and that the attic in your home is properly insulated. This also allows you to save money on energy bills.
6. Sign up, when and if possible, to a green energy supplier, who will supply electricity from renewable sources (e.g. wind and hydroelectric power) – this will greatly minimize your carbon footprint contribution from electricity.
7. Unplug your electronics: Most electronics still use some energy even when turned off. This ’standby mode’ or ‘phantom load’ drains up to 10 percent of electricity used in most homes.
8. Replace any incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs or light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Fluorescent light bulbs are more expensive but last 8 to 15 times longer than an incandescent bulb.
9. Use surge protectors to make it easier to unplug lots of things at once when you leave a room.
10. Regulate your home temperature: Move your thermostat two degrees cooler in winter and two degrees warmer in the summer.
11. Dry clothes on a clothes line instead of in a dryer. Whether electric or gas, less use of any energy to heat air to dry your laundry is less energy consumed.
12. Use a low-flow showerhead and faucet aerators to conserve water.
13. Use the bus or a train rather than your car.
14. For short journeys either walk or cycle.
15. Purchase a carbon offset family plan and become carbon neutral

List provided by: Time For Climate Justice.org