In honor of Earth Day, this month’s My Wonderful World challenge (as outlined in our April campaign e-newsletter) is to find ways to reduce your carbon footprint. What’s a carbon footprint, and how can you calculate your own? Visit the Nature Conservancy website and use their convenient calculator tool to assess your individual or household carbon footprint. Then, tell us what you’re planning to do to contribute to a greener, more wonderful world. I plan to change all the incandescent light bulbs in my apartment and replace them with more energy-efficient fluorescent bulbs.
In other ‘footprint’ news: Did you get a chance to check out the National Geographic Channel’s “Human Footprint” special that aired this past Sunday? What did you think?
Thanks for the comment Samille! We asked our colleagues at the National Geographic Channel about the photo shoot and the fate of the items in the photographs. Here is their response:
“Everything was either recycled, returned or donated:
Clothes were donated to local shelters.
Potatoes and bananas went to a pig farm.
Cans were borrowed and returned from recycling centers.
Ducks were on loan and sent back.
Paper and plastic was recycled.
Milk was actually empty containers filled with water and then recycled.”
I invented and patented a universal light switch that saves as much as 95% electricity in most applications and is self-installed in under “1 minute”!
Did your program on Human Footprint create an enormous amount of waste? I hope that this was not the case, but how else was it done? I hope it was computer generated, but if so I think you should make that clear. The number of eggs that were wasted made me shudder. And the plastic in those ducks, please tell me it wasn’t real!
Thanks, Samille Jordan
Interesting site, Ed. Thanks for passing this along.
A few lingering questions: Does per capita carbon output measure ALL state sources combined, including both domestic/household and industry? If this is the case, then fossil fuel producing regions and those with heavy industry, e.g. Texas and Alaska, and Louisiana will naturally be at a disadvantage for their role in supplying carbon resources used by those of us in the rest of the country. In that case, I would like to see an additional calculation focused specifically on per capital domestic carbon output. I would also like to know about carbon emissions for the District of Columbia, where I currently reside. Great resource, though! It really makes you think about the geographic profile of our collective national footprint.
Check out this US Carbon Footprint Map, an interactive United States Carbon Footprint Map, illustrating Greenest States to Cities. This site has all sorts of stats on individual State & City energy consumptions, demographics and much more down to your local US City level…
http://www.eredux.com/states/