55 Everyday Ways To Reduce YourCarbon Footprint

www.reelcaribbeanenergy.com

Reduce. Avoid unnecessary consumption. Do you boil

enough water for 6 cups when you only want one?

1

2 Reuse. Buy items that are reusable and reuse them.

Recycle. Recycling reduces landfill and saves resources. 3

4 Shower under 4 minutes. If you are showering 10 minutes you are wasting enough water to fill a pool in a course of a year. You can save more than 16,000 liters of water, $90 on the water bill and $150 on gas.

Use innovative tap and shower fittings that can cut the flow of

water by more than half. 5

6 A single flush toilet can use up to 12 litres in one flush! Reduce your flushing to only when necessary.

Instead of using a dishwasher, wash your dishes. A dishwasher can use more than 40 liters of water per cycle.

7

8 Use the suns rays to heat your water, its free, it will provide most of your households hot water needs and it reduces your carbon footprint.

Go Photovoltaic: though it is initially expensive to set up, aphotovoltaic system will generate enough power for 30 years and pay itself off after about 8.

9

10 Minimize your heater use and use insulation material made form jute, glass wool or recycled paper to keep you warm. Home heating and cooling is responsible for 11 per cent of household greenhouse gas emissions.

11

12 Use fans instead of air conditioning.

Seal the cracks: use inexpensive seals to plug cracks and gaps, fitting dampeners to fireplaces and blocking unnecessary vents.

Use natural light, open your curtains, have a sky light inserted in your roof, this will save you electricity usage.

13

Often lighting is unnecessary. Turn them off if you are not in the room using them. This will reduce your electricity bill and carbon footprint. Dimmer the lamps also helps. And it is a myth that turning lights on and off uses more electricity than leaving them on.

Natural gas and reverse cycle air conditioners are better alternatives then radiators and electric bar heaters and fan heaters.

14

15

16 Warm yourself and not the environment. One of the earliest – and still most efficient – forms of insulation invented was clothing. Temperature variations are a natural part of life.

Choose the natural solution when drying out your clothes, hang them on the clothes line! If you don’t have a clothes line, choose a solar clothes dryer.

17

Select cold water cycle on your washing machine to wash your clothes. Using hot water generates five times more in greenhouse gas.

Maximize your fridge’s efficiency by making sure the seals work and position it in a cool spot. Freezers should be set 15 to 18 degrees below 0 and fresh food compartments set to 4 degrees. Every one degree lower increases energy consumption.

18

19

20 Cook efficiently, reuse hot water, put lids on pots, have dishes simmer rather than boil and don’t worry about preheating the oven.

Plastic is difficult to dispose of and ruins our environment. Choose furnishings and household items that will last and can be recycled.

21

Detox your home! Household chemicals are toxic for the environment. Remove chemicals like paints, aerosol cans, furniturepolish, glues, oils, nail polish remover and battery acid.

23

22 Soft furnishings. Look for natural furnishings that have been or can be recycled, tables made from reclaimed timber, organic cotton curtains, beeswax candles, bamboo, hemp bedding or jute flooring.

25

24

Use recycled bricks, windows, roof tiles, door floorings, windows, doors, fireplaces, and fittings in your home.

Go with the grain. Wood is a perfect renewable and sustainable resource. Just make sure your wood is coming from a forest managed according to internationally agreed social and environmental standards.

Use glass technology and heavy lined curtains to keep your house cool to prevent you from using air conditioning.

Turn off your tv, dvd player, electronic appliances at the power point. Having it on actually uses electricity, costs you money and increases your carbon footprint.

2726

28 Save water and go for native plants. Foreign plants will guzzle water. Native plants will not only attract birds and butterflies but save the time and expense of daily watering.

30

29

Cover up. Cover up your lawn and put mulch around your plants and lawn to cut the amount of water lost through evaporation by 70%.

In natural bush land there are five main layers of vegetation in which different animals live. Try to replicate this in your garden with a combination of tall trees, smaller trees and tall shrubs, groundcover grasses and a little layer of leaf matter, fallen branches, logs and rocks. This is greater biodiversity, lowers your gardens water consumption and lowers your water bills!

Go green! Plant trees around your home and use plants inside your home. Plants not only lower greenhouse emissions and provide habitats for wildlife, they can also lower home energy costs by keeping your place cool.

Use a grey water system. Use recycled water for the toilets and garden from basins, showers, washing machines and the kitchen sink using grey water recycling systems. Only about half of the water used by the average household needs to be crystal clear drinking water.

32

31

Get a water tank at your place that can catch the water that falls on your roof and use this water for the garden, to fill the pool, for flushing toilets, doing the laundry, showering or even drinking. This will lower your demand on water supply.

Make a clean sweep. Eliminate all petrol- powered mowers, blowers, snipers and trimmers which would cut as much air pollution as taking a quarter of the nations vehicles off the road!!

34

33

Grow your own fruit and veggies. It's fun, will lower your grocery bills and carbon emissions and makes for better eating. The further your food travels to reach your plate, the greater the energy and associated greenhouse emissions.

Plant a tree! Trees help to clean the atmosphere by extracting carbon dioxide from it and turning it into wood. And trees are objects of beauty.

36

35

37 Resist the temptation to open the over door to check on progress. Every time you do so, up to 25% of the heat escapes.

Grow your own chamomile or mint for herbal tea rather than always using factory made tea bags.

Register with a mail preference service and always tick the 'don't pass on my address' box when filling out applications can cut the amount of unsolicited mail you receive by 14kg.

3938

40Use cloth or biodegradable diapers. Disposable diapers take up to 500 years to decompose, and it takes a cup of crude oil to produce the plastic for just one diaper around 8 barrels of oil per child.

Make your next computer a laptop. You'll consume up to 90% less energy than a desktop computer.

Switch your screensaver setting to none or blank screen. Screensavers end up using more energy than not having one.42

41

43 Slow down your driving. Faster driving uses more fuel, so try to keep speeds down to maximize your miles per gallon.

Unplug your mobile phone charge when it's not in use. Even if nothing's attached, many chargers still use energy (if it feels warm, it's using electricity).

Dry clothes on a clothes line instead of in a dryer. Don't dry towels, as they contain a lot of water, and naturally dry by design.45

44

46 Wash clothes with cold water, hang dry your laundry rather than putting it in the dryer when it's warm outside. Clean the lint filter in the dryer every time.

Replace any incandescent light bulbs with Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs). Replacing just one incandescent light bulb will save 150 pounds of carbon dioxide and, because it lasts 15 30 times longer than an incandescent bulb, save approximately US$185 over the course of its lifetime. LED lights are highly efficient and are able to reproduce the soft light of incandescents. They also contain no mercury and last six times longer than CFLs.

47

48 Turn off your lights when they aren’t being used, even when you leave a room for a short period of time.

Turn off the water while brushing your teeth.

Turn off your computer when you're not using it.5049

51Plant trees to shade your home and air conditioning units.

52 Buy rechargeable batteries.

Decrease your meat consumption. More land has to be put into agricultural production to produce meat than to produce plant products. Because the methane they belch is 23 times more effective at retaining heat than CO2, domestic animals contribute more to global warming than all human transportation combined.

Use recycled bags when you are shopping.54

53

55 Walk more.