Introduction
Everyone can contribute to a more environmentally friendly approach towards nature. To describe this individual impact, the term “carbon footprint” is one of the most understandable and informative. It refers to the amount of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases directly or indirectly produced through daily lifestyle (González-García, 2018). The main carbon footprint components are waste, transportation, food, energy, and water. By calculating the personal carbon footprint, one may realize what aspects of life should be changed for more sustainable practices. Such consciousness about the impacts of lifestyle on the world is called sustainable living.
In order to acquire skills in calculating the carbon footprint, an experiment was conducted and analyzed (see Appendix). The idea was to collect all the data throughout the week about all the components of the carbon footprint formula. Firstly, all the transportation was recorded, including the number of people in the car and the point of destination. Secondly, the complicated task was to outline the food diary with types of packaging. Thirdly, the energy was described by indicating the number of lights, type of energy, and all the interactions with electricity throughout the week. Fourthly, it was the easiest task to calculate all the water used on an everyday basis. Finally, another challenging task was to trace all the trash collected because I intentionally restricted the use of rotting garbage.
Analysis of the Experiment
It was hard to be careful about all my behaviors and usage throughout the week. It seemed that every step that I was taking required keeping notes. In fact, this feature of the experiment was the most surprising. Unsustainable living was perceived as something unavoidable in the settings of the contemporary world. Car trips several times a day, many meals from plastic, water use for baths, and electricity use at every step – for many Americans, it is the everyday reality. Therefore, I tried to elaborate more sustainable approaches to all the traditional actions during the lab.
It is interesting to compare modern waste collection with those statistics of the year 2005. In 2005, paper waste accounted for the biggest proportion of garbage. Remarkably, this amount of paper waste grew throughout the measurement period, starting from 1960. It seems that the patterns of waste drastically changed recently, with plastic waste comprising a significant part. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (2022), glass was the leading item in 2018, while plastic waste has grown through the years. However, during my observation, there were many plastic cans and packages, so this item was the leading one.
There is a wide range of possibilities to reduce carbon footprint by choosing sustainable practices in all the components, so here I will introduce only some of them. Plastic trash may be substituted by reusable cups for coffee and bottles for water. Transportation can be mitigated by co-using one car for classmates. Although food waste is hardly reduced in urban settings, there are possibilities to reduce the use of processed food by eating nuts and vegetables. Concerning electricity, one should always check whether unnecessary lights are turned off. Water use is greatly reduced by rational water management while brushing teeth and shaving.
The extreme case of sustainable living is depicted in the movie No Impact Man, the story of a family that went completely green in their daily lifestyle. The major reaction to this story was the conviction that the overwhelming majority of the population would not follow this example. The reason is that modern technologies have made the quality of life high, so the opposition to such practices will be enormous. Therefore, although some practices like eating food produced by local enterprises can be legitimate, contemporary society should undergo a more gradual transition to sustainable living.
Considering my practice, some decisions about water consumption were quite successful. For example, I completely transformed my water use while brushing my teeth and shaving. I understood that the flow of water during this process was completely useless. However, it took a significant amount of work to stop using plastic bottles and packages. The market of fizzy drinks does not provide climate-neutral bottles, while it was extremely hard to change these habits of drinking Pepsi. The compromise was found in collecting plastic for further recycling and buyong bigger bottles for more rational use.
Another fundamentally new idea for me during this exercise was co-using the car with my family members. Americans are accustomed to having personal cars, which increases carbon dioxide emissions (Kolbe, 2019). At the same time, European reality is more environmentally friendly because there are more public transport and routes for bicycles. In my case, the road to work coincides with my parents’ road. The only cost was a few hundred meters of walking to my street, which was not a big problem. Therefore, car sharing, which I had not practiced prior to this experiment, became my new sustainable practice for moving towards more environmentally friendly transportation.
However, an indispensable part of my lifestyle is the constant use of a laptop for work and studies. For example, I prefer reading books and research articles from the screen because access to physical books and journals is problematic. Considering this practice from a sustainability perspective, laptop use requires energy and natural resources, so that some activists may be against such overreliance on electricity-demanding activities. Therefore, I am surely not a person who may give up all unsustainable practices while ready to move for reductions.
Conclusion
To conclude, the carbon footprint experiment was critical to closely examining habitual water, electricity, and transportation practices. Through such self-analysis comes the realization of how modern life in the US is unacceptable for a sustainable approach to nature. Besides, collecting garbage during the week helped me understand where it is necessary to change my lifestyle radically. The top practices during the week were turning off the water when brushing teeth, shaving, and sharing a car for commuting. At the same time, it became obvious that I could not yet give up some vitally important unsustainable activities.
References
González-García, S., Esteve-Llorens, X., Moreira, M. T., & Feijoo, G. (2018). Carbon footprint and nutritional quality of different human dietary choices. Science of the Total Environment, 644, 77-94. Web.
Kolbe, K. (2019). Mitigating urban heat island effect and carbon dioxide emissions through different mobility concepts: Comparison of conventional vehicles with electric vehicles, hydrogen vehicles and public transportation. Transport Policy, 80, 1-11. Web.
US Environmental Protection Agency. (2022). National overview: Facts and figures on materials, wastes and recycling. Web.
Appendix A
Table 1. Summary of the carbon footprint elements
Table 2. My carbon footprint
Table 3. Reducing my carbon footprint
