10 Ways to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

It’s easy to reduce your carbon footprint.  You can help our planet and wildlife quickly with simple changes at home.

Julie Smith, 5/23/26

This is a summary of Chapter 16, Reducing Our Carbon Footprint Per Capita, in the book, “2050: What’s it Gonna Be?”.  You can download the full chapter, as well as other chapters.  References are here.

In 2019, global human activities resulted in 42 billion metric tonnes of CO₂e emissions worldwide.  With a human population of 7.8 billion, this works out to an average of 5.37 metric tonnes of CO₂e emissions per capita.  Per Chapter 3, we can get our carbon emissions back into balance with our planet if, in the next 30 years, we reduce our average global carbon footprint per capita by about 40%, from the 2019 baseline, to about 3 tonnes/capita.  Of course, this will only work if we are able to gradually reduce our population at the same time, by about 30% over 30 years, to around 5.8 billion.  Also, keep in mind that we also need to increase our forest cover, ocean sanctuaries and wildlands for this to work, and reducing our population will help with those issues big time.

By the way, since 2019, through 2025 we've actually increased our population to 8.3 billion, and increased our carbon emissions globally by another 1%, or a half billion metric tonnes. Ouch. Feels like we might be going in the wrong direction. Ya think?

If we fail to reduce our population, or if we choose to continue growing our population, then we would, in theory, need to reduce our carbon footprint per capita by a lot more than 40%.  For now, we’ll make a rather optimistic assumption that common sense and a general sense of concern regarding the condition of the planet that we choose to leave our children will somehow prevail, and that we’ll manage to get our population reduced at the same time we reduce our carbon footprint.  After all, miracles have happened before.  And having kids is getting more expensive than ever, driven, ironically, by the sheer mass of humanity demanding resources that are more and more scarce, thanks to our overuse.  Talk about a vicious circle.  Think about how expensive fossil fuels are going to get when we’re down to our last 10 years’ worth, if we don’t get off our butts and do something NOW.

By understanding our individual carbon footprints, we can see where our own footprint is highest, and figure out how best to reduce it.  Instead of trying to do everything at once, or throwing our hands up in confusion, frustration and despair and doing nothing, we can prioritize our actions, pick a few things that will make a difference, and go from there.  When you understand what your impacts are, and you know how much you’re reducing your carbon footprint, it’s actually kind of fun, and you’re also helping the planet at the same time.  Which we desperately need to do, so it might as well be fun, right?

The first thing to realize is that, while the global average carbon emissions per capita is 5.37 mmt/year-capita, the emissions in the U.S. is 13.68 mmt/year-capita, or 2.5 times the global average. This means that we have to reduce our emissions by 80%, which is a lot more than 40%. Does this sound like a lot? It is. But that doesn't make it impossible. Hilary and I are already at a 70% reduction, after a journey of about 3 decades, and currently working on that last 10% reduction to get us to 80% reduction. Technically, we're already there, because we offset our travel emissions by donating to "One Tree Planted" to increase forest cover, and "Population Connection" to reduce unintended births. At the end of the day, however, I'm a bit of a purest in addition to severe environmental OCD, so the ultimate goal is to reduce our CO₂e by 80%.

I'll also say that once we reach 80%, I'm not going to be inclined to do much more. After all, everything we do creates carbon emissions, and we all have to eat. Also, to be honest, I love the technology that keeps us comfortable, informed and entertained, and I love to travel, which will always have a footprint. When we get to that 80% reduction we're taking a damn vacation from all this insanity. That doesn't mean we'll increase our emissions. It means I'll do something besides constantly dwell on the numbers. At least, that's my hope. I could work a puzzle or something. Maybe take up crochet. Actually I love to write, so I'll be doing a lot of that. I'll even be writing about sustainability at times. But it will never again be anything nearly as intense as 2050.

What it gets down to is not so much what we do, but how we do it. I've already given ample advice about reducing population in Chapter 6, and began discussing increasing carbon uptake of trees and natural landscapes generally in Chapter 11. All three legs of sustainability, carbon footprint per capita, carbon uptake and population, are linked and intertwined to the point where it's impossible to completely break them apart. This summary emphasizes carbon footprint per capita, which is something that we can each do with our personal consumer choices on a a daily basis, and can have a very fast near-term impact if enough of us do it. In addition to our personal carbon footprint, we will also impact the all-important carbon sinks of forest and natural land cover, as well as the most important issue of all, our biodiversity and wildlife biomass on planet Earth.

I prioritized everything we consume and do in the U.S. by deep diving into all the energy, transportation, water, food and construction energy and materials that are used, from cradle to grave, to calculate total embodied, or all-in, carbon emissions. I used national and international data collected by such agencies as the EPA, EIA, Our World in Data, and Wikipedia, and relied on academic research reports to fill in any gaps. I then prioritized our consumption to show where we use the most carbon, which should inform the first simple steps we can make as individuals to reduce our carbon footprint per capita.

As an example of the methodology used, let's take glass. If one looks on the EPA website for the carbon footprint of glass manufacturing, the number they find includes only the CO₂ released when the raw materials of glass manufacturing, sand, soda ash and lime, are reacted when melted at a temperature of 3,000 ºF. This is not the total embodied CO₂e emissions of glass manufacturing, because it doesn't include the obvious natural gas needed to reach the temperature of 3,000 ºF, or the electricity to run the glass-forming equipment. Nor does it include the less obvious mining and refining of the raw materials, which require substantial energy, or the carbon of transportation of the raw materials to the glass manufacturing facility. I pulled all this information together and added it up, arriving at a total cradle-to-grave carbon emissions of glass manufacturing that is substantially higher than the EPA reported value that only accounts for the reactions between the raw materials. This unique way of presenting carbon footprints of various materials is powerful, and can potentially drive individual consumer choices that can save our planet.

Below is a high level table of prioritized total embodied carbon emissions in the U.S.. It shows 10 ways to reduce your carbon footprint. Chapters 17 - 24 in 2050 provide specific information and tips on exactly how you can reduce your carbon footprint. Luckily, you can also save money and stick it to greedy ultra-wealthy oligarchs at the same time. Now how cool is that?

And the winner is (drum roll please) our food!  Not a huge surprise, actually, but now consider it verified.  And even though many of us would have guessed the “what”, even more important is the “how”.  Table 1 shows that that there’s a whole lot more to the all-in food carbon footprint than just the non-combustion emissions from agriculture, which is what the EPA data shows.  When we include all the details and the bells and whistles of food production, a more complete picture emerges.  The total footprint of our food includes the electricity and combustion, that happens mainly in factories that process and package food, fertilizer and pesticide factories, the farm machinery, which is captured in non-freight transportation, the transportation of raw foods to the processing plants and the processed and fresh food to the ultimate point of sale, in other words, distribution centers and stores. 

Land use is also captured, and the capacity of the land to absorb carbon that was lost when it was converted to agriculture is added.  It turns out that the industrial farming practices that result in the non-combustion CO₂ emissions of synthetic fertilizers and toxic pesticides applied to the land, combined with the loss of carbon uptake capacity, are by far the biggest components of our food production.  And to think I figured the food processing and transportation would be the worst of it.  They’re not.  I’d be wrong on that.  By a long shot.  Think about that.  If we look at the big picture, if we all consumed only organic food, that alone would reduce our food emissions by 42%, translating to an 8.7% reduction in our total carbon footprint.  And, by only producing organic food, we’d go a long way towards allowing our wildlife to recover by not constantly poisoning them with our nasty pesticides.  And, by not wasting 12% of our food like we do now, we could reduce our carbon footprint by another 2.5%.  If we did both, that’s about a 11.2% reduction in carbon footprint right there. Without making severe changes in our lifestyles.  Think about that.

I hope that you can see the potential here, and how every one of us can make a difference right now in our individual purchasing choices.  Buy only organic and don’t waste the food.  When we buy local fresh food, the issue pretty much takes care of itself, because many local growers are organic, or at least mainly organic.  You can ask them about that.  The thing about organic farming is that it’s safer for the actual growers, and they usually don’t want to handle dangerous toxic chemicals.  One thing you can be pretty sure of is that they’re unlikely to fly over massive fields spewing poisons that make the entire landscape toxic and uninhabitable, like they do in Iowa on the industrial farms.  Don’t believe me?  Just drive through there sometime and view the gargantuan monocultures of farm fields.  And if there are planes flying overhead close your windows and turn off the vent.  Unless you’re on a bike, in which case your life will be shortened by probably at least a year.  Anyway. 

Food carbon emissions is followed closely by construction, and then home energy, personal transportation, commercial energy, single-use packaging and paper, non-military aviation, textiles, water and wastewater treatment, and the rest, which is all the bits and pieces that roll up to our total annual carbon emissions in the U.S.

These are the 10 major contributors to carbon emissions in the U.S. Each and every one of us can make a difference in these categories, which would help our planet and our wildlife a lot, while making the planet a better place for our descendants compared to if we choose to do nothing.