Claire Freeby

Quackenbush
Physics, Per. 4
5/31/15

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How to Decrease My Carbon Footprint

A carbon footprint is a persons total amount of carbon dioxide produced indirectly or
directly (Time for Change). Every person in the United States has a carbon footprint with
varying amounts of carbon dioxide they produce. Each persons carbon footprint is different
from another person, because not everyone uses energy the same way another person does. The
measuring of carbon footprints is an important metric for environmental protection because it
enables scientists to measure how large the worlds carbon footprint is so that they can research
better ways to decrease greenhouse gases emissions and they can see how much people are
damaging the earth.
After conducting my energy audit, I realized that my family uses not as much energy as
most families. My family uses only about 7,347 kW annually, which is 67% less than the
national annual average at 10,908l kW. I was impressed with these calculations to see that my
family uses so much less energy than many other families. After finding my annual consumption
of energy I converted and calculated the pounds of
carbon my family produces, which amounts to
approximately 4,197 pounds of carbon. My family
and I try to not waste energy because not only is it
costly for our bills but we recognize that it is costly
to the planet; we are pretty ecofriendly at my house!
To the right and at the end of my paper I included a
pie chart to show my familys energy consumption
broken up into three categories, appliance and
lighting, refrigeration, and electric A/C.
Reducing our carbon footprint is a must to
keep the planet that we live on thriving and
supporting inhabitants on earth. Two ways to reduce my carbon footprint is changing my lights
to more efficient light bulbs and increasing the insulation in my house. Changing my lights to
specifically compact fluorescent light bulbs would save me more than approximately 2/3rds than
regular light bulbs that I use in my house (How to Reduce). If changing my light bulbs to
compact fluorescent light bulbs would save my family 2/3rds than my familys annual
consumption of lighting would be brought down from 1572.48 kWh to just 524.16 kWh (How to
Reduce). By increasing the insulation in my house I mean getting new weather strips around my
house and redoing the caulking around all the windows and door frames in the house (How to
Reduce). Making these small changes to my house would help lower my carbon footprint
because my family would be able to keep the thermostat at a warmer setting, because less cold
air would escape my house. If less cold air escaped my house, we would run the A/C less
frequently because the house would stay nice and cool throughout the day. This improvement
would change my familys energy consumption from approximately 2,639,000 kWh to 2,111,200
kWh because I estimate that my family would run the A/C for only 4 total hours instead of 5
hours now because we would cycle my A/C off and on more throughout the day.
Offsetting our carbon footprint is another way to help conserve our planet, although it is
not as effective in lowering our carbon footprint as reducing our energy consumption. Two ways

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to offset my carbon footprint is planting more trees in park areas and outside my house and
another way would be buying what is called carbon credits. Planting more trees in park areas
and outside my house would help offset my carbon footprint because plants absorb carbon
dioxide and produce oxygen, which would help eliminate the carbon dioxide in the air (Top 10
Reduce). Although it is not possible to plant enough trees to absorb my entire carbon footprint, if
I planted even a few more trees they would probably absorb a small portion of my carbon
footprint. I can estimate this because there are millions of trees the entire world, but yet they do
not offset carbon footprints enough to reduce a significant amount of carbon dioxide in the air.
One of the major ways of offsetting carbon footprints is buying carbon credits from companies
that work on projects that research renewable energy sources (Top 10 Reduce). In buying
carbon credits I would not be able to estimate how much the projects I am supporting would
reduce my carbon footprint, but that I was supporting companies who strive to find new ways to
lower carbon footprints in the future.
A larger version of my pie chart for my energy consumption

Works Cited:

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Brook, Barry. Top 10 ways to reduce your CO2 emissions footprint. Climate Change,
Emissions, Impacts, Renewables. Brave New Climate. 29 August, 2008. Web 31 May
2015
How to reduce your carbon footprint. Carbonfund.org. n.d. Web 31 May 2015
What is a Carbon Footprint. Time for Change. n.d. Web 31 May 2015