3/9
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.
4/9
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.
5/9
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.
