9 Carbon Footprint Facts You Never Knew

Irina Gutyryak/Getty Images

LED Lightbulbs Are Carbon-Reducing Powerhouses

Light-emitting diode bulbs use 75% less energy and last 25 times longer than incandescent bulbs. “If every home in the U.S. swapped one regular lightbulb out for an LED bulb, that would reduce emissions as much as taking 800,000 cars off the road,” says Michelle Passero, director of climate change and nature-based solutions for The Nature Conservancy in California. LED bulbs also don’t get hot, which makes them safer.

George Pachantouris/Getty Images

Short Flights Are the Most Carbon-Intensive Way To Travel

Airline flights less than 400 miles emit more carbon dioxide per person than longer flights. On the other side of the spectrum, heavy rail transit, like subways and metros, produce 76% fewer greenhouse gas emissions than a car with one person in it. Light rail systems produce 62% less and busses 33% less.

Unfortunately, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the U.S., “Public transit use has fallen dramatically since the 1960s, and transportation emits more greenhouse gases than any other sector of the economy.”

Chaiyaporn1144/Getty Images

Cement Is Extremely Carbon Intensive

Cement is the most consumed resource on Earth except for water, and accounts for 8% of global CO2 emissions. That means if the cement industry was a country, it would rank third in the world for emissions. Cement creates CO2 in two ways: directly from fossil fuels burned during manufacturing, and from the chemical reaction that happens during its creation, which turns calcium carbonate into lime and CO2.

There are, however, more and more eco-cements on the market that have much lower carbon footprints. If you’re a builder, you can make a big difference by embracing new cement technologies. Also consider old-school technologies like natural-fiber insulation, such as hemp, flax and jute, which have half the carbon footprint of fiberglass insulation.

Anton Petrus/Getty Images

Single-Use Plastic Also Has Big Feet

Our consumption of single-use plastics is dizzying: The average American uses about 110 pounds a year, and worldwide 1.2 million plastic bottles are used per minute. Some estimates say that by 2050 plastics could account for 20% of all oil consumption, and every step of the way they create greenhouse gasses. For one, plastic itself is a petroleum product, made from oil. But even the removal of forested land for pipeline construction and oil extraction has resulted in 1.6 billion metric tons of CO2.

Luckily, cutting down our use of single-use plastics is pretty easy if we put our minds to it.

Oscar Wong/Getty Images

Emails Contribute to Your Carbon Footprint

An average email has a carbon footprint of around 0.3 grams, which is roughly the weight of a butterfly. That sounds pretty insignificant, but globally we send 347.3 billion emails a day, which adds up to 230 million pounds of butterflies. Deleting emails lowers your carbon footprint because it helps save energy used by data centers, which account for 2% of the U.S.’s total energy use. If everyone around the world deleted 10 emails, that would save 1,725,000 gigabytes of storage space, or around 55.2 million kilowatts of power.

Similarly, it can help to send fewer unnecessary nicety emails, like “thank you.” If everyone in the U.S. sent one less of those, it would save 100 tons of carbon a year, or about the equivalent emissions from 22 passenger cars. Hey spammers, listen up! This means you’re more than a nuisance, you’re actually diminishing our future.

Catherine Falls Commercial/Getty Images

A Lot of Our Carbon Footprint Is Hidden

Many of our individual emissions are actually tied to things that happen elsewhere, like a factory in another country that makes the products we buy, especially when it comes to power tools and other home-improvement items. For example, when you turn on a gas-powered lawn mower it makes emissions from burning fossil fuels, but significant emissions were also made when it was manufactured.

To help cut down on these indirect emissions, “You just have to buy less stuff,” says Whitman. “Increasingly, we’re also trying to get individuals to pressure companies into taking more responsibility for their emissions so that when you buy a piece of clothing, furniture or yard equipment, those upstream emissions are being dealt with.” Reduce your carbon footprint by using biogas generators.

Gilmore Tana/Getty Images

Solomon Islands Have the Highest Carbon Footprint Per Capita

Globally, the average person’s greenhouse gas emissions per year is 6.5 tons. In the U.S. it’s more like 17.6 tons, which one of the highest in the world but not as high as the Solomon Islands (69 tons) and Qatar (40.4 tons). Qatar’s are high because it has a low population with emissions-intense industries like oil and gas production. The Solomon Islands also have a small population, but with large emissions due to deforestation and other land-use changes.

On the other end of the spectrum, Fiji actually has a negative footprint, because its forests and land-use changes absorb more emissions than they create.

Alexander Spatari/Getty Images

The U.S.’s Per Capita Carbon Footprint Is Dropping

Yes, actually a bit of happy news. In 1990 the average American’s yearly carbon footprint was 21.7 tons, which is almost 20% higher than today. The European Union has also lowered its per capita emissions from 10 tons to 7 tons. In both places, the drop is mostly due to switching from fossil fuels to renewables like solar and wind power. On the other hand, the per capita carbon footprints of emerging economies like India and China have risen dramatically (though India’s is still low at 2.5). A

ccording to the World Resources Institute, “The good news is that globally, per capita emissions have not increased since 2010, indicating that the world is slowly diverging from its previous path of carbon-intense development.” But, to have the best chance of avoiding a 2-degree rise in global temperatures, we need to drop the global average to less than two tons by 2050, so we have a lot of work ahead of us.

JGI/Tom Grill/Getty Images

There Are Lots of Footprints

Besides carbon footprints, scientists measure our impact on the planet with a whole Footprint Family that includes water, land, energy, nitrogen and more. You can also calculate your ecological footprint or the amount of environmental resources needed to support your lifestyle. The development of 15 minute cities is also a prominent step to check the harm we are causing our planet while making things easier for the people.