Carbon Footprint: What it is and How to Reduce it

Carbon Footprint: What it is and How to Reduce it

Amelia DesMarais, Author, 7th grade

Carbon footprint is the amount of carbon (or other gases) produced and emitted/released into the air to support human activities like driving or processing food. Carbon footprint is a big contributor to global warming and overall pollution. But since carbon footprint is caused by humans, only humans can reduce it. If everyone in the country (or even better, the world) just did a little something, it would help the world so much. Hopefully, you will do something that reduces your carbon footprint and share it with whoever you can.

One place where you can your reduce carbon footprint is at home. At home, you will probably not end up the only one reducing. Your family will find out and may want to join in. If they don’t, try to convince them to. One of the easiest ways to reduce your carbon footprint at home is to turn off lights when they’re not in use. A more expensive way of reducing is installing solar panels. This really isn’t something too many people actually do. It’s not necessary, but it would help a whole lot. Another way to reduce at home is using less unneeded water. Washing the car less, getting plants that don’t need to be watered as often, taking shorter showers, and turning the water off at home all contribute to reducing. A final way to reduce your carbon footprint at home is to eat less meat. The production of meat causes so much gas and carbon footprint that if everyone in the country didn’t eat meat only once a week, it would have the same effect as taking 500,000 cars off the road. Eating less meat is also healthier and spares the lives of many animals.

School is also a good place to reduce your carbon footprint. If an entire school took part in reducing, it would be a big help to the town/village/city. Probably the easiest way to reduce at school is to recycle. Throw your cans in the recycling bin made for just that purpose! It’s a problem that has a simple solution. Another school-related way to reduce is to walk or bike to school instead of driving. If you don’t live too far away, instead of getting a ride, walk with friends. Along with that, you should only print things when necessary. Often people will print things that didn’t need to have been printed. Don’t print things that could have been one page instead of two. Make sure that what you’re printing out doesn’t have any errors and is exactly how you want it to be.

Your community is one of the best places to help reduce our carbon footprint. This is a really important place to reduce our carbon footprint because it will make your community a cleaner and better place to live. Your actions may inspire others on your community, which could end up leading to something big. One way to reduce your carbon footprint in the community is to use reusable bags when shopping. The fewer plastic bags that are used, the less carbon is emitted in the process of making them, and it’s really easy to just bring a reusable bag. Another way to reduce carbon footprint in your community is to compost. Composting reduces the amount of carbon and other greenhouse gases let out into the air from the garbage in landfills. This is a great way to work in your community and help the world. Another way to reduce carbon footprint in your community is to plant trees. Planting trees will help to filter the carbon out of the air and turn it into oxygen. Trees will use our carbon footprint to their advantage. The more trees and forests there are, the more carbon footprint will be reduced. This would be a great idea for a community project and is a great way to help the world. Of course, just because trees use carbon dioxide, it doesn’t mean that if we plant enough trees we can keep on causing a carbon footprint.

Reducing the carbon footprint that we release into the air is vital to the future of humankind and the entire world. The more people reduce, the better a chance we have at saving the earth, which happens to be the only planet on which our life forms can live and thrive. I hope that more people will be alerted to the problem so humans can fix what we have started.