What Is a Carbon Footprint? How Can We Reduce CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) Emissions? Discover the Simple Science of Greenhouse Gases.

How to Reduce Your Family’s Carbon Footprint

A family trip to the beach leaves behind a sandy path marked with both the big and little footprints of you and your brood. A family’s trip through life leaves a different kind of trail, not nearly as cute or easily washed away-the carbon footprint. Here is an explanation of what a carbon footprint is and how you can reduce your harmful impact on the environment.

What Is A Carbon Footprint?
Explaining this in 'Green Science', many of the things that we do, on a daily basis, generate carbon. Carbon itself isn’t a villain. To understand what a carbon footprint is, we need to start with a very small, and I promise painless, chemistry lesson. Carbon, the big ‘C’, is one of the most common chemical elements in the entire universe, along with its buddies hydrogen (H), helium (He), and oxygen (O). Carbon is the main element that all living things are made of. It comprises more than 18% of your body. When people talk about a carbon footprint, they are actually referring to carbon dioxide (CO2), a gaseous compound made of one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms. This is the stuff we breathe out when we exhale. But our collective breathing isn’t the problem.

Carbon and Greenhouse Gases
On earth CO2 is one of the main greenhouse gases, which are substances in the earth’s atmosphere that trap heat and prevents our planet from becoming too cold to sustain most life. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has been known to vary before, as was the case during the Ice Ages. They were relatively catastrophic periods where the earth entered cycles of intense cooling sandwiched with planet warming (such as now). And presently, it is us humans who have more of an impact on the earth as our modern activities started generating too much carbon dioxide. Today the buildup of these emissions is a major cause of global warming - this is now becoming a fully accepted scientific fact. Are we about to precipitate a similar cycle?

Types of Carbon Emissions
Your carbon footprint is the number of tons of carbon dioxide you generate, through your lifestyle, every year. There are two categories of how we generate greenhouse CO2. Direct emissions of carbon dioxide come from activities such as traveling in a petrol burning vehicle, which spews CO2 right into the atmosphere. We also generate indirect emissions through production and delivery of the goods and services that we consume. So finding ways to reduce the amount of carbon that your family generates is a powerfully green way to pitch in and slow down the build up of greenhouse gases.

Organic Family Circle will be posting more articles on specific ways that your family can painlessly reduce your carbon footprint. So do return and keep a lookout for more of our upcoming earth-friendly ideas.

And if you have great energy-saving ideas, by all means, post a comment and share the green!