How Big is Your Carbon Footprint?

How Big is Your Carbon Footprint?

By Emma Kajiyama

Every time I post a new link or blog to The Urban Nurture page, I am acutely reminded of the saying “practice what you preach”.  As an advocate for caring for the environment, I am always trying to learn and research on how to be better at living sustainably to help reduce my personal carbon footprint on our planet.  At the present, there is so much more I could be doing.

Everything we do, be it driving a car or something as simple as acquiring more shopping bags, has an adverse effect on the environment.  The only problem is, usually, we don’t immediately see the results of our actions until we hear bad press about the climate, from the plastic waste found in the oceans to the ever-receding habitat of polar bears.  Even then, we sometimes don’t realise that the cause of it is us.  So how radically are we prepared to change our lifestyle? Taking action collaboratively is a progressive move so it is imperative to understand ways in which we can help.

In the UK the modern culture of consumerism has left us in a difficult position. Does an endless variety of clothes, food and technology create laziness and apathy towards caring about our environment? Do we blame a lack of time or money for our readiness to forget the implications of shopping in supermarkets, buying whatever is in front of us, no matter where it may come from? Do our modern lifestyles prevent us from questioning how environmentally sound the items we buy really are?

The answer for many is yes.  I know myself how easy it is to give in to the abundance of shopping. For me, it is the convenience of buying anything I want, as soon as I want.

Furthermore, eating sustainably also becomes an interesting debate, where we have to understand that all food products are interconnected, and that the issue is much more complex than just eating meat or being a vegan.  The use of pesticides and some fertilisers to grow our fruit and vegetables invariably kill insects, worms and pollinators who are incredibly vital to the production of our foods.  And we also find that most of the fruit and vegetables in our supermarkets is not grown in Britain. The carbon footprint of shipping them to the UK is huge.  This in turn has a destructive impact on the habitats of animals the world over, not forgetting the social problems importing from other countries can generate and the excess waste that is thus created.

Eating meat is also an intricate issue, depending on whether consumers are comfortable about eating meat of an unknown source and are content to be unaware of the quality of the welfare practiced.

Buying organic, local, Fairtrade and growing our own food can be seen as ideal. There is an element of trust that we can place in products which claim to be free of pesticides and GMOs. And by growing our own produce we have power over how we do so, and this helps to drastically reduce waste. However this way of living can be more expensive and rarely as convenient.

So, becoming ‘better at living’ as a modern consumer can be a challenge and it is a massive lifestyle change.  To do so, we must reduce our carbon footprint, carefully consider our product options and essentially research every single place we eat or shop. It’s great that more and more of us are starting to make these changes, especially in a world which is fast-paced and where we still compete for that better car or lust after a certain fashion craze. 

I will find it a difficult task but I hope to change my modern consumer-ways as much as I can.  There are certain brands I will not shop at, and re-using shopping bags has now become my norm. But of course I can and will do better.

I think as human beings we owe it to our planet to look after it as it has looked after us. We therefore should try to aim to work collaboratively to understand how to better our ways of living, rather than being complacent about our individual ways of life. We cannot truly know for certain how best to live, but we can encourage and inspire each other to live a little less selfishly and a lot more sustainably.

After note: I have coincidentally written this on ‘Earth Overshoot Day’.  This is the point at which humanity goes into ecological debt.

It has emerged that as of today, “humans have already used up 2015’s supply of Earth’s resources… we have exhausted a year’s supply of natural resources in less than eight months, according to an analysis of the demands the world’s population are placing on the planet.” (TheGuardian.com, 2015).  We have been using up the Earth’s yearly quota, earlier and earlier each year.
Let’s do something to change this, take action today and let’s make a move to become more sustainable together!