We are being advised to reduce our carbon footprint. Discuss the significance of this for the individual and for industry.
What is a carbon footprint for an individual? 1 “A carbon footprint is a measure of the impact our activities have on the environment, and in particular climate change. It relates to the amount of greenhouse gases produced in our day-to-day lives through burning fossil fuels for electricity, heating and transportation etc. The carbon footprint is a measurement of all greenhouse gases we individually produce and has units of tonnes (or kg) of carbon dioxide equivalent.” basically everything we do in our day to day lives affects our carbon footprint from sending a text message to driving a car, and it is starting to take its toll on the world.
Why should you bother trying to reduce your carbon footprint? The answer to this is quite simple if you don’t bother trying to reduce our carbon footprint the CO2 will build up in the atmosphere and the earth will heat up, causing all sorts of problems from ice caps melting to diseases being able to thrive in places that they couldn’t live before, eventually causing life on earth to change altogether. 2 “Our industrial society is producing greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, which trap heat in the earth’s atmosphere, which causes global warming or climate change as it’s become known more recently. This in this in turn is causing glaciers to melt, and extremes of weather conditions such as heat waves, flooding, drought, hurricanes and tornadoes. Many people still believe global warming is not scientific fact that is still up for debate.
We are now in the hottest period of earth since global temperature records began. The ten hottest years have been since 1990. The debate over weather warming is real and is not over. The flooding of the south of England in 2007 is just one example of increasingly severe weather conditions which have been linked to global warming. This is a problem that will not simply go away. And there is worse to come”.
The question now is what could you as an individual do to reduce your carbon footprint? There is a wealth of information online and in books; if you start with the basics at least you are doing something. Let’s start with something everyone need to do to survive, food shopping. More and more products now have a carbon footprint label as this article explains 3 “Carbon footprints Environment: Carbon-footprint labels, which indicate a product's environmental impact, are quietly spreading. Do you look for carbon-footprint labels on goods when shopping? If you do, you are in a small minority. The practice of adding labels to foods and other products, showing the quantity (in grams) of carbon-dioxide emissions associated with making and transporting them, began in 2007 when the world's first such labels were applied to a handful of products sold in Britain. The idea was that carbon labels would let shoppers identify products with the smallest carbon footprints, just as other labels already indicate dolphin-friendly tuna, organic milk or Fair-trade coffee. Carbon labels have yet to become as widely recognised by consumers as other eco-labels. Adding a carbon label to a product is a complex and often costly process that involves tracing its ingredients back up their respective supply chains and through their manufacturing processes, to work out their associated emissions.” While shopping try to pick up local produce not only is it supporting local businesses but it has a smaller carbon footprint because it has travelled less which in turn helps your carbon footprint, and if possible try to do you shopping in one single trip.
