Your Carbon Footprint

You’ve probably heard this term a lot. Organizations and well-meaning individuals speaking on climate change and urging you to be careful as to minimize your “carbon footprint”, sure you might be interested for a few minutes but soon you forget all about it. The sad truth is many people haven’t been interested enough to even find out what a carbon footprint is or how to make it smaller and if they do, the knowledge hardly is ever reflected in their actions.

First of all, what is a carbon footprint? It can simply be described as an impression you leave on the environment with activity that release carbons into the atmosphere, particularly CO2 which is a harmful gas released when fossil fuels are burnt. The more fuel you use the deeper and bigger your footprints will be. You might think to yourself that your carbon footprint is miniscule but most of the time it is much bigger than you think. This is simply because every single action that you make leaves a mark, right down to the “organic foods” we eat, even if you do grow them in your backyard. Short of living in a cave there is no way we can leave this earth without leaving our own personal (harmful) stamp on the environment.
However just because we cant prevent it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be careful. There are ways to minimize your carbon footprint on the atmosphere.

Change your light bulb- energy efficient light bulbs are aptly named, compact fluorescent light bulbs (the fancy curly ones) are not only better to look at but also they save more than 2/3rds of the energy of a regular incandescent. Each bulb can save $30 or more over its lifetime. In addition o this it can reduce over 1000 pounds of carbon in its lifetime.

Carpool- both private and public forms of carpooling are massive energy savers, rather than emit harmful gasses with hundreds of cars, this is drastically minimised by putting everyone together in on vehicle.

Buy local food- rather than store bought products not only are you sure that the journey between the ground to your shopping bag was a short, eco-friendly one you can also be sure that it is much healthier for your body.

Unplug those gadgets- does more need to be said about this? Unplugging the things that are not being used saves a lot of electricity, and not only does it ensure that you’re not harming the environment more than you need to but it extends the lifetime of your electronic gadgets which saves you money from having to buy news ones so quickly.

Go paperless- this can be done both at home and in work and even in school. Double sided printing reduces the use of papers, and apps like SignTech eliminates the use of papers completely in companies. Newspapers cause their weight in carbons, you can read them online, and you can also buy e-books rather than the physical ones that cause trees to be cut down for paper. Companies especially have the obligation to the environment to go paperless, but if you still have doubts about going paperless maybe some numbers and figures will change your mind. According to QUE®
“Resource Information Systems Inc. (RISI) estimates that U.S. companies will spend about $8 billion per year on managing paper. A 2005 study by the Minnesota Office of Environmental Assistance estimated that associated costs could be as much as 31 times the purchasing cost of paper, which includes not only actual price, but storage, copying, printing, postage, disposal, and recycling”
SignTech is one of the best apps for going paperless in your company helping companies like Barclays bank

Reuse, Reduce and recycle- these are things said countless time but this does not diminish its importance, for every pound of new produced products 2 pounds of carbon are emitted into the atmosphere. By reusing you’re preventing twice the new products weight in harmful gases from being released into our environment.

Use laptops- laptops are designed to be energy efficient rather than desktops, which use a constant source of electricity. They save more than 75% more energy than desktops. Plus they’re easier to carry around.

There are many more ways to reduce your carbon footprint in the environment; these are just a few of them. What other ways can you think of to reduce harmful emissions into the environment?

SignTech is an innovative paperless platform that creates forms and documents for full completion, signing and integration. For more information visit www.signtechforms.com or email info@signtechforms.com.