Reduce Your Carbon Footprint in 5 Cool Ways

With Earth Day coming up on April 22, it’s time to thaw out your ideas for saving energy and reducing your carbon footprint. 

We asked Colin Carlson, an environmental activist since age 9 when he founded the Cool Coventry Club in 2006, for five things individuals could do to reduce their carbon footprint.

Carlson is a UConn junior, pursuing two degrees with honors in environmental studies and ecology and evolutionary biology. He is also a Udall Scholar. He hopes someday to work outside of government to design environmental policies that are ecologically and socially sound.

Here is Carlson's advice:

1. Invest in a renewable future. Sign up for the Clean Energy option on your energy bill, which will cost just a few cents more a month and will support developing renewable energy, or invest in a carbon offset. Even if you use compact fluorescent lighting and drive a hybrid, you probably still use fossil fuels that spew CO2 into the air.

You can offset the amount of your carbon footprint by investing in projects that displace electricity and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that you can’t avoid in your life. You can purchase offsets through companies such as NativeEnergy or consult the Sierra Club guide and recommendations.

Offset prices can vary by company. They range from three popular companies is $10 to $36 for offsetting a round-trip flight between San Francisco and New York, $50 to $72 for the annual emissions of a mid-size car, and from $90 to $288 to offset emissions of an average home. Carlson says this is a hot gift idea – buying offsets for your friend’s carbon use – but it’s also a new industry and an unregulated one. So make sure you research a little.

2. Power your mower. Americans love riding a gasoline-powered mover over their patch of lawn, but Carlson suggests a switch to a mechanical push mower. “You’re doing more of the work, so less work is being done by fossil fuels,” he says.

The Environmental Protection Agency says Americans burn 800 million gallons of gas a year in their mowers, accounting for 5 percent of U.S. air pollution. And 17 million gallons of fuel are spilled each year while refueling lawn equipment, more than all the oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez. You may get flak if this is your teenager’s chore, Carlson says, but the bonus of getting a good workout and fighting the obesity crisis makes this idea “the all-purpose social solution.” 

There may be a slight adjustment if you’ve been using a power mower for years, but Carlson advises, “As someone used to pushing a mechanical mower, it’s really very little work. I have a really old mower, from back in the stone age of mowerdom.”

3. Hang ’em high or low. Summer is the perfect time to start hanging laundry outside to dry. But if you’re driven inside by condo rules or rain, not to worry. A drying rack works very well. Beware of a damp basement, however, as it could create mold problems. This option saves energy and therefore money, which appeals to the Yankee skinflint in all of us. The clothes smell like a breezy day, too.

4. Eat local, and cut the meat. It’s easy to go to the big box supermarket to find everything you need, but that comes at a large cost to the environment. Most of the food at the big chain stores is shipped by trains or trucks, which kick a lot of bad stuff into the atmosphere. Summer affords a chance to shop the farmers’ markets.

“I’m a little spoiled because Coventry has one of the best farmers’ markets in New England,” Carlson says. A second food-related idea is to avoid meat, which, for each pound, takes about 2,500 gallons of water to produce. Compare that with 13 gallons to get an egg to your plate. “Eating lower on the food chain is definitely a way to cut your carbon footprint,” Carlson says, because you still need to grow the plants to feed meat-yielding animals. So eat the plants and avoid the waste.

5. Stop the clocks. If you haven’t done it yet, put your TVs, DVDs, computers and such on power strips. Even turned off, appliances will use power to maintain internal clocks. Put them on a power strip and turn everything off with one switch.

Carlson says the only downside is what he’s dubbed the 10-Minutes Lag Time, which he defines as the phenomenon where “you sit in front of the TV clicking the remote wondering why it won’t turn on.”