How to Reduce Your Personal Carbon Footprint

Everyone today is talking about reducing their personal carbon footprint. Whether it's nature lovers who want to see our planet habitable for as many future generations as possible, or people who don't believe that global warming is a man-made phenomenon, it's become clear that reducing your carbon footprint is one way to shave expenses around your home without having to make any major lifestyle changes in the process. The most important aspect of reducing your carbon footprint is to reduce the overall amount of waste in your life. Whether this is installing a timer on lights in your home that you usually leave on, or learning how to hypermile your family car, you'll find that a number of things that are good for the environment are also significantly good for your wallet.

The car

You should never think that you have to trade in your car for a hybrid to reduce your carbon footprint. In fact, it's been proven time and again that if you junk a perfectly good car in favor of a hybrid, you'll be doing more harm than good. It takes energy, after all, to produce a new car, but doesn't use any new energy to drive a car that you've already got. In addition, learning to hypermile your existing car can easily overcome any fuel economy shortage that you may think you are experiencing by driving that old car.

The house

Around the house is the best place to reduce your carbon footprint and save money at the same time. Begin by researching whether your trash hauling company offers benefits for recycling. While some companies will charge you for recycling, other companies do so free of charge and will even provide you with incentives for separating your trash from your recyclables, such as coupons, free or reduced-cost entertainment, and a number of other incentives. The reason they can do this is that the raw materials gained from recycling, while relatively expensive to refine, is still worth money. If they collect it and sell it to other companies, it frees up room for real garbage in landfills and by extension, saves the trash companies money. It's a win-win for everyone involved.

Beyond recycling, it's a good idea to switch out less-economical appliances around your home, namely your light fixtures. This is an expense, yes, but has been proven time and again to reduce your electric bills significantly. For instance, a typical incandescent light bulb may burn at 65 watts, while a compact fluorescent bulb will only burn at 15 watts to produce the same amount of light. They also last much, much longer than standard bulbs because they don't use up their filament through heat.

All this can add up to significant savings while at the same time avoiding dipping too deeply into your pockets for the initial outlay investment. By the time you realize just how much you'll be saving every month by reducing your carbon footprint, you may start to think carefully about those new energy efficient windows, insulation or even energy-efficient appliances everyone's talking about.