Our Manifesto

My sister and I are pledging to reduce our carbon footprint by one half over the next year. Our current carbon footprint has been calculated to be roughly 10 tons of carbon. This is well below the National average, but much higher than it should be. In the technology reliant lifestyle that the world has created, it is very difficult to personally offset your carbon footprint. We plan on implementing little changes in our lives to reduce our carbon footprint without having to drastically change our lifestyles.

Being 16 years old and living away from the majority of our family, it is difficult to live a life that is near carbon neutral. For instance, there is no public transportation near our house that would allow us to take the bus to school, so we are forced to drive 25 minutes each way, 5 days a week. We also fly up to visit our family in Alaska 3 times a year. This puts out a significant amount of carbon (about 5 tons) into the atmosphere. Almost half of our carbon emission is due solely to transportation.

Our plan is to slowly implement greener habits into our lives for the next 12 months in order to lower our carbon footprint. The first few things that we plan on doing to lower our carbon emission is to:

• reduce, reuse and recycle 
• cut phantom power by turning off electronics when they are not in use
• cut down on water usage by shortening shower time to 5 minutes or less and turning off the tap while brushing teeth
• go vegetarian for a month

We plan on making more of these subtle changes throughout the year and writing about our experiences. We want to prove that it is very easy to live green without drastically changing your lifestyle- although we have not lived lives with terrible carbon emission, being 16, we are now able to drive and will be living on our own soon. It is important for us to learn how to do our part in the fight against global warming before our impact on the planet increases.

- Morgan