Carbon Footprint Awareness Is Important

Many of us cruise through our daily lives completely oblivious to such things as a carbon footprint. The products we use have an impact on the crisis of global warming and add to the greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere. Our day to day lives are led in such a way that we simply don't have the time or inclination to stop and wonder how our actions affect the larger picture.

Here's just a personal example of how our energy use is taken for granted. Our multiple digital clocks run in our houses 24 hours a day – we’ve got one on the microwave, one on the conventional oven, one on the CD player, one on the stereo and one in each of our three bedrooms, all of them drawing passive energy and we don’t even give it a thought. It’s just one of the assumed “rights” of living in a modern affluent society, we may not use it but we don’t mind paying for it regardless. It may be a little shocking for some people to learn exactly what the level of carbon emissions they produce each year is, as well as the added costs they are incurring simply by being blase about the little things.

You Can’t Change What You Don’t Know

I like that sentence, it neatly sums up a whole range of human instincts and precisely describes one of the roadblocks in front of those trying to educate people on the importance of reducing our carbon footprint. It only takes a gentle reminder that there are consequences for the actions taken on a daily basis that people begin to realise that there is a need to change.

It's only when you find out that the yearly average carbon dioxide production for running a car stands at two and a half tonnes that it hits home that there may be a problem. It also allows you to then set a goal to lower your number for the next year. Now you have given yourself a goal that can be quantified with the possibility of aiming to achieve. Without the calculation of your carbon footprint you would be resigned to stating that you produce some (or a lot of) carbon dioxide. Trying to produce less in the future would be next to impossible to gauge.

The fact that there is also a corresponding cost benefit to reducing your carbon footprint size should have people flocking to the cause.The cost benefit in question is an actual dollar saving! Fortunately, the word is slowly getting out there while, with any luck, the levels of carbon dioxide aren't.