It’s not just our waists that balloon at Christmas, it’s our waste as well. As we round the corner of another belch-worthy holiday season, it’s worth taking a moment to weigh not only our bulging pads on the bathroom scale but also our footprint worldwide. Yuletide merriment gives us a chance to extend love, gratitude, and friendship to kith and kin – but this time of year is also an opportunity to remember the Atlas burden carried by our slumbering life-giver, the Earth. If you’d like to give her a hug this New Year and take your foot off the pedal of global carbon consumption, we’ve put together a few well-researched ways to do just that.
The good folks at Michigan University have published a veritable checklist of ways in which we can curb our nastier habits, in their Carbon Footprint Factsheet – and though some of their findings may challenge our comfort zones, Nature assures us that their scientific colleagues at the University of Leeds have pored through nearly 7,000 studies that concur with their conclusions. Together, these brainiacs have found that between 10-30% of all household carbon consumption is munched, nibbled, quaffed, and burped back up at the dining room table. As we decide between the chicken skewers and the beef hotpot, if we go for the beef, we’re choosing to inflate the earth’s carbon balloon by a further 7.2 times, bigger than the barf of our chicken choice. So, be polite… and:
- Choose the chicken.
Of course, going Vegan means you’ll barely sneeze at the atmosphere of the planet, but we know that New Years’ resolutions are best taken in baby steps, so perhaps stick to the skewers and leave the Tarzan look to next year. In the meantime, keeping the lights on in your humble home, when added to the great Monopoly board of the United States, accounts for 10% of the nation’s carbon consumption, while keeping every bedroom cozy consumes an estimated 44% of the energy flowing through U.S. households. What you may not know is that all those little red lights gleaming from your dormant appliances, in standby mode, account for a whopping 5-10% of all residential energy consumption. So, for goodness sake:
- Switch off your doodads at the wall, or plug them into a power strip – and flick it off when not in use.
Your presidential Beast in the driveway is not just a status symbol, it’s also a gargantuan carbon mouth to feed. Cars and light trucks belch 17% of all U.S. emissions and although it may be difficult to eliminate car travel completely, you can do a few simple things to lessen the burden of your guzzler, on both your pocket and our planet. Given that every 5mph acceleration over 50mph costs an extra $0.13-$0.25 per gallon, it’s worth paying attention to those road signs, obeying the speed limit – and improving your car’s fuel economy by 7-14%. With all those facts now in, it’s surely time for another New Years’ resolution:
- Slow down, drive safely, and make sure your car’s tires are properly inflated – because fuel efficiency decreases by 0.2% for each 1 PSI decrease.
Finally, since choosing energy-efficient lightbulbs may not cut the mustard, when tightening up your bills and reducing your carbon footprint, it’s worth remembering that covering 80% of the commercial roof area of the U.S. with solar panels would be the equivalent of switching off 32 coal power plants. So, if you’d like to see how we can help you lose a few notches on your household belt this New Year, pop into our showroom and we’ll take you through the numbers. After all your partying, the planet may just breathe a sigh of relief.
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