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Climate change can seem inevitable, especially with all the bad news out there—but that couldn’t be further from the truth. There’s a lot that we can do as individuals to make the world a better place, reduce waste, and ensure that we’ve minimized our own carbon footprint. How do we do that? The first step is to calculate your carbon footprint. Then, you can identify sources of CO2 emissions in your life, take steps to reduce that number, and even start offsetting.

Here are a few unexpected sources of CO2 emissions that contribute to your carbon footprint… And what you can do to reduce or eliminate them!

Travel by Car & Plane

While you may know that your car contributes to greenhouse gases, do you know how much? According to a 2017 study from researchers at Lund University and the University of British Columbia, in a year, the average car produces 2.6 tons of carbon dioxide. And travel by plane is even worse, with aviation now responsible for 12% of CO2 emissions from all transport sources.

What can you do? Well, there is good news on the horizon. Electric cars, trucks and SUV’s are coming soon. These new models have much longer range and have also come down in price with Tesla just announcing a price reduction on their cars.

Consumer Goods

A large percentage of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States comes from the production and transportation of consumer goods. This means your Amazon boxes, the packaging on wholesale inner tubes (and the tubes themselves!), and all the transportation required to get those goods to their destinations contributes to our carbon footprint.

What can you do? Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Use what you have as long as you can, repurpose if possible, and avoid plastic when you can.

Beef And Dairy Consumption

Bad news for burger lovers: Industrial meat and dairy sources are often major sources of CO2 emissions. The resources required to raise cattle on a mass scale are often highly destructive to the environment and includes deforestation—a top contributor to our carbon footprint. Industrial agriculture overall is damaging to the environment, but the damage caused by the meat and dairy industries together is at the forefront.

What can you do? Eat less meat and dairy products and buy local when you can. Local farms that use ethical farming practices are far less damaging to the environment.

Home Energy Use

This one may be less of a surprise—especially for Texans—but it’s no less serious. Home energy use in the United States contributes 20 percent of our country’s carbon emissions. There’s a wide range of things you can do to bring your energy bills down, like sealing your doors and windows, investing in energy-efficient appliances, and keeping the A/C at a reasonable rate.

What else can you do? Add solar panels to your home! Your new home solar panels create clean energy from a 100% renewable source, and won’t increase your carbon footprint.

If all this talk about carbon footprints and planet-harming emissions has you itching to take action, don’t wait! Longhorn Solar can help you achieve freedom from the grid and reduce your carbon footprint just by converting to rooftop solar. Check out our solar panel calculator to see how much you could save, or reach out to our solar experts, and one of our team members will walk you step-by-step through our turnkey solar installation process.

Ready to join the movement? Go solar today!