Ways to reduce your carbon footprint at home

This month we were honored to collaborate with Redfin, one of America’s leading real estate brokers, on their latest blog post in which they suggest ways to help people to reduce their carbon footprint at home.

In their blog, Redfin’s writer Julia Weaver sets the stage by introducing the concept of what a carbon footprint is and goes on to suggest different lifestyle choices, habits and products that we can easily adapt into our homes in order to contribute towards a larger carbon reduction goal.

What is a carbon footprint?

Redfin summarises what it means to have a carbon footprint, the environmental impact and examines the statistics that applies to the average American person;

‘A carbon footprint is an individual, group, or company’s total amount of greenhouse gasses emitted into the atmosphere. These gasses include carbon dioxide (the gas most commonly emitted by humans), methane, and fluorinated gasses, all of which are both direct and indirect results of transportation, consumption of food and consumer goods, and home energy usage emissions. These gasses trap heat in the atmosphere, causing a rise in global temperature.

The average American’s carbon footprint is 16 tons of carbon-equivalent emissions annually, 12 tones more than the global average. The Nature Conservancy recommends that the global average for an individual’s carbon footprint drop below 2 tons per year by 2050’.

To calculate your carbon footprint, you’ll need to measure the following:

• Approximately how many miles you travel by car, bus, train, and plane

• The energy usage in your home

• What types and how much food you consume

• Shopping habits

No matter what you score, it’s great to have a baseline and know where you can make improvements and what impact those improvements will have on your carbon footprint.

Benefits of reducing your carbon footprint

Protecting the environment and creating a better future are the most obvious benefits to reducing your carbon footprint. Even the smallest changes – perhaps swapping your current showerhead for a water-saving one, or turning the lights off when you leave a room – can make a big difference towards helping the environment in the long term.

Reducing your carbon footprint also has the potential to help you save money. Here is one of the easiest ways you can start to reduce your carbon footprint at home and do your part to combat climate change.

Make a difference by using less water

Reducing your carbon footprint is easier than you think. The average US household can save more than 50% of the water wastage from their shower with one simple trick: reduce the flow when you are not actively rinsing. This practice is already prevalent in drought affected areas and studies have shown that this can help to reduce more than 50% water used by your shower.

The Oasense Reva showerhead automates this process by using embedded sensors to limit the flow when the user steps back to lather up and gives 100% full pressure flow when they step forward to rinse off. This not only conserves more than half of the water usually lost to habitual waste, but also contributes towards carbon footprint reduction by using a built in hydro turbine to generate 100% of the energy needed to power the sensors.

Oasense Reva uses greener technology give users a sustainable shower option that doesn’t compromise on warmth or water pressure.

According to the online carbon footprint calculator from the EPA, that equates to a carbon footprint saving of nearly 1 metric ton of CO2 or equivalent to 1,808 miles driven by an average passenger vehicle.

Large amounts of water is also wasted in everyday activities such as running your washing machine or dishwasher, taking a shower or even watering your lawn. By making small conscious changes at home you can make a world of difference.

Why not try only running full washing loads, or adding a water butt to one of your drain pipes, switching to an eco shower, or watering your plants with a watering can are all tactics we can easily employ in our challenge to reduce our overall carbon footprint.

If you would like to learn more about this topic and how to reduce your carbon footprint at home please follow this link to read Redfin’s full blog post:

13 Ways to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint at Home