10 Ways to Reduce Carbon Footprint of U.S. Dry Goods
Energy from consumption of general consumer dry goods in the U.S. is 10.5% of the total U.S. carbon footprint that is warming our planet. Here are ten common-sense ways you can help reduce the carbon footprint of dry goods with practical actions.
Julie Smith, 9/2/26
This is a summary of Chapter 23, The Rest Of It, in the book, “2050: What’s it Gonna Be?”. You can download the full chapter, as well as other chapters. References are here.
The remaining emissions that are not accounted for in the individual categories that I chose to deep dive into in previous chapters and blogs, are for the mixed bag of products and activities that we choose to be a part of. This list of stuff is endless and random, and you’ll probably know better than I what you do that’s not covered separately in the previous chapters and blogs. Think about it. What do you do? What do you buy? Do you do a lot of sports? Do you get equipment for that? Climbing? Hiking? Camping? Skiing? Boating? Off-road? Hunting? What about appliances, entertainment systems, computers, housewares, yard tools, toys for the kids, electronics, snow blowers, leaf blowers and hair dryers? You get the picture. Think about what you have, need and actually use. At 10.5% of our gross carbon footprint, it’s a decent prize in terms of reducing carbon footprint.
Take textiles, a $60 billion industry in the U.S.1,2 The manufacturing and emissions of textiles in the U.S. amounts to 1.7% of our carbon emissions. A total of 16.9 million metric tonnes of textiles is manufactured in the U.S. annually, which amounts to about 112 LBS per person. Textiles are challenging to recycle because of the wide variety of materials used in them, as well as blends of materials in the same products, such as in footwear, and only 11% is recycled in the U.S., with the rest discarded to landfills, as discussed in Chapter 22. Textiles includes pretty much everything made from cloth, so in addition to our obvious clothing and footwear, it also includes all our cloths, towels, sheets, window coverings, mattresses, pillows, upholstery, rugs and carpet. Other stuff like suitcases and sportswear like tents, sleeping bags and such are within the textile category as well. Think about that. Do you personally consume more than 100 LBS of textiles every single year? Seems excessive to me, but if you don’t personally, somebody is sure as hell consuming it.
The following table is a more detailed breakdown of Textiles emissions. Just like the other consumption categories, the emissions of textiles can be broken down into the industrial manufacturing of final products from raw materials that are grown, raised, mined and extracted from the earth, and ultimately discarded at the end of useful life. It’s actually pretty easy to get rid of this portion of carbon emissions with personal purchasing decisions, by simply not buying new products. Most of the textiles we buy can be purchased used at one of the many local thrift stores, and serve us well for many years. Even sports equipment can be found used and in excellent condition. Where we live, there are several amazing used sports equipment venues within a reasonable distance, that are stocked with astounding selections of pretty much everything imaginable. Recently I bought a couple outdoor folding chairs to replace some failed ones for $10 each, when they would have cost about $30 each for new ones.
Textiles should be a really easy thing to reduce in our lives to reduce our carbon footprint, but evidently many of us don’t see it that way. Clothing production literally doubled from 2000 to 2014, and it wasn’t strictly to accommodate population, which increased by 19% over the same period. It was because consumers bought 60% more clothes and are wearing them for half as long as they used to. This movement is called “fast fashion”, referring to the cheap and fast mass production. Now 60% of all clothing is estimated to end up in landfills or incinerators within a year of production.3 I mean, how absurd is that? Seriously. And not only does all this waste increase our carbon emissions all for pretty much nothing, it also increases water, which plays big in manufacturing, just like any other industry. For example, a single pair of jeans consumes 2,900 gallons in manufacturing. Think about that.
So, who are you? Do you need constant changes of clothes to be happy and feel relevant? Or do you go shopping out of boredom and then buy something just to feel fulfilled? If so, you can make a difference by actually doing something meaningful with your spare time, like preparing wholesome food from raw bulk ingredients and feeling joy and pride in your creations. Or just take a nice walk outside. Or volunteer for a sustainability organization. So many good ways to use our time besides shopping.
Besides the textiles, the remaining emissions, not accounted for in the individual categories that I chose to deep dive into, are for the mixed bag of products and activities that we choose to be a part of. This list of stuff is endless and random, and you’ll probably know better than I what you do that’s not covered separately in the previous chapters. Think about it. What do you do? What do you buy? Do you do a lot of sports? Do you get equipment for that? Climbing? Hiking? Camping? Skiing? Boating? Off-road? Hunting? What about appliances, entertainment systems, computers, housewares, yard tools, toys for the kids, electronics, snow blowers, leaf blowers and hair dryers? You get the picture. Think about what you have, need and actually use. At 8.8% of our gross carbon footprint, it’s a decent prize in terms of reducing carbon footprint.
By one count, the average U.S. home contains about 300,000 items.7 Based on my own personal experience, that doesn’t sound too far from the truth. After two moves and many estate cleanups in our lives, we’ve experienced moving a lot of stuff, much of which never even got used once. We’re again finding ourselves purging our belongings for the umpteenth time, and feeling better and less stressed with each repurposed item. Lightly used things go to thrift stores, and we try to find a recycling outlet for more seriously worn stuff. These days, we literally don’t buy anything unless it’s something we’re replacing that’s either too worn for use or irreparable, and we mainly buy used unless we can’t find it in a thrift store.
Our kitchen is not and has never been full of a bunch of silly and redundant specialty items, like hot dog pans, omelet pans, mechanical knives, lettuce dryers, and other nonsense that big corp pitches to us all, as though our lives will be so much better and easier and simpler for it. All lies.
When we cook, we use cast iron or stainless steel pots and pans. We begged off the stupid poisonous Teflon coated pans years ago, after finally realizing that the coating is just a pain in the brain, because you can’t clean the pot aggressively because you’ll ruin the finish, which always happens eventually anyway. And then the self-same plastic coating gets into our food and we end up consuming it, yet another way microplastics penetrates our bodies. Big corp sold us on this insanity by telling us that we’d never have to scrub a pan again because nothing would stick to it. What a bunch of lard. We still have to scrub, and any coating that we don’t eat goes down the drain and poisons the environment, as discussed in Chapter 14. Of course, big corp then wants to sell you yet another new pan when the coating is destroyed, and on it goes. Give me a cast iron pan and some steel wool and I’m good to go. The pan will last for hundreds of years. Same for stainless steel, except maybe not so much the plastic handles. At the end of the day, there’s no getting away from washing dishes, so the sooner we get over ourselves on that particular issue, the better.
Big corp has literally invented holidays to compel us to buy-buy-buy. Think about that. Between Christmas and Valentines and Halloween and Easter and Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and what-have-you, if you give at all of these, it’s no wonder you don’t have money left over for responsible food. I mean, nothing says “I love you” like cheap labor junk made in China. And Black Friday, waiting until the very second that Thanksgiving is behind us to spend spend spend on all that junk you’re going to give for Christmas. My personal favorite: You gotta spend to save!
When we cleaned out our father’s condo after he passed, we found an entire closet full of useless junk that people had given to him over the years, in original packages, that he accepted to be polite, said “thank you”, and then stashed in the closet. Where it stayed for the rest of his life. Until we cleaned up his condo. Yeeeesh.
Sadly, it turns out that buying things releases dopamine in the human brain, and it may even be addictive.8 Of course, big corp understands this and uses it to their advantage, constantly deluging us with junk mail and advertisements, pressuring us to buy stuff we don’t need and upgrade when we don’t need to, just to keep the big companies that make this stuff constantly growing, to the great detriment of our pocketbooks and our environment. Not only do we exploit resources and energy needed to make all this stuff, but then we waste it when our obsolete stuff or stuff we’re bored with piles up and we get rid of it one way or another.
Here are ten common-sense ways to reduce carbon footprint of dry goods in the U.S. If we all followed these simple practices, we could reduce our carbon footprint by about 10%.
If you need clothing, buy used whenever possible. This goes for any dry goods.
If you are bored with clothes that are still wearable, at least take them to a local thrift store so that somebody else can take them, instead of just tossing them in the trash.
If you can't find a used item that will work for you, try to at least find an environmentally responsible source. Please avoid nylon underwear that will release yet more microplastics into the wastewater every time they're washed.
Don't replace things just because big corp tells you to. Ridiculous examples are to replace your toothbrush every 4 months, to replace your pillows every 18 months, or your mattress every couple years. Of course they want to sell more, and they may go to great lengths to brainwash you into wasting your money to increase their sales, but that doesn't mean you have to. That part is up to you.
Share large items with friends and neighbors. You can even set up a community sharing system. Do we all need our own chainsaw or drill? How often will you actually use it?
Fix things that are broken rather than discarding them. There is more emphasis these days on "right to repair", to move us away from planned obsolescence. Find a small appliance repair shop or self-repair workshop near you. You can usually find instructions online too, like at www.ifixit.com.
Make sure you really need it.
Give sustainably. Don't just give a gift to give a gift. Is it really a gift if the recipient doesn't need or want it? Or is it more of a burden? Think about your gift-giving. An experience or a book or a bottle of wine that will be enjoyed or a canned good that you personally made means a lot more than an ugly sweater or an electric broom.
Keep it simple. Do you seriously think that a leaf blower is better than a broom? Do you seriously think that blasting dust all over the place with a noisy, disruptive, smelly fuel-oil powered monstrosity is absolutely necessary, when all it does is move the residue around, when you could sweep it up with broom and dispose of it?
In the kitchen, avoid the nasty plastic-coated cookware that's poisoning you and the environment, and stick with plain old cast iron and stainless steel.
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