10 Simple Tips to Reduce Your Personal GHG Emissions

Here are some simple options that can help you reduce your Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHGs) from your everyday life. They cost little or no money, and often these tips will even save you money. Each tip has some details below:

1. Drive slower
2. Carpool, or combine trips
3. Eat less meat
4. Grow your own food
5. Reduce your heat & air conditioning
6. Avoid bottled water
7. Compost
8. Take shorter or lower temperature showers
9. Avoid using the clothes dryer
10. Buy less stuff

Drive slower and carpool

Transportation is one of the largest sources of GHG emissions in Canada and reducing fuel consumption really reduces GHG emissions. 

1 litre of gasoline produces about 2.3kg of CO2 (reference). 

There are several ways to reduce your fuel consumption, such as buying more fuel efficient vehicle like a hybrid, plug-in hybrid or electric vehicle. However that's an expensive option and best to consider when you're in the market to buy a new vehicle.

An easy way to reduce your fuel consumption is to carpool. If 2 people decided to drive to work together, when likely that's about 50% savings! Maybe this can work for a trip for groceries, or off-island for a shopping trip. Talk to your friends and get in a vehicle together - usually this leads to more enjoyable driving as well.

Reducing your speed can usually lead to better fuel economy as well. This is mostly because air friction on your car increases significantly as speeds increase. A rough estimation is that doubling your speed would mean 4 times the air drag. Here's an American article with some statistics, and here is the data translation to metric for Canadians:

Example: Toyota Camry

        @88  km/h              @104 km/h            @120km/h

            =5.8L/100km         =6.7L/100km         =7.9/100km

Basically, if you drive slower you will use less gas to get where you are going - but it will take a little longer. This saves you money as you cover the same distance with less gas!

Keeping proper care of your vehicle will also help you use less fuel too.

Meat and Vegetables

Overall, meat is a common part of our omnivore diet as humans. However, in Canada we more meat than the average in the world, and between 1961 and 2014 meat consumption has more than doubled. Meat is also more energy intensive to produce because it is higher on the food chain. This means that first we grow vegetables/grains, then an animal eats them, and then we can eat the animal. About 90% of energy is lost in this extra step of the food chain. So eating less meat means consuming less energy to produce the food. It is estimated that going one day without eating meat would save about 3.5kg of GHG emissions. Perhaps try one day a month, or one day a week?

If you can grow your own food as well and that saves in a different way. The food production system grows food in one location, transports it to a warehouse, then to a grocery store, and then you buy it and bring it home. Each of those steps consumes energy such as fuel for transportation. Eating local, such as from your own garden or from a local farmer reduces GHG emissions as well.

Home Heating/Cooling

Heating our homes through winter, and cooling in the summer, is a large GHG emissions source. Finding more efficient heat sources such as heat pumps makes a big difference, but simply turning down the thermostat in the winter by 1 or 2 degrees also makes a difference. An estimate states that turning down your heat by 1 degree could save up to 350kg of GHG emissions, and over $100 in energy costs! Just cosy up with a warm sweater and you won't even notice that 1 degree.

Reducing Waste

Reducing how much garbage you produce will help save GHG emissions as well. If less is thrown out for the landfill, then you are likely consuming less, or using reusable items more. Two easy ways to reduce your waste is to avoid bottled water and composting.

Bottled Water is a bit of a scam because there are less health rules around the purity of bottled water than there is with municipal water. Also, the cheap plastic used with bottled water can get into the water you'd be drinking. Overall though, clean water is a human right and you shouldn't have to spend money buying it. If you want to have cleaner water than what comes from your tap, it's better to buy a simple filter like a Brita than use all those disposable plastic bottles to reduce waste and save money too.

We don't consume 100% of the food we buy (eg: coffee grounds), and it is actually a great resource if you take advantage of it. Composting your food waste brings returns for new soil nutrients that can help your garden grow bigger and better food. Sending compost to the landfill is not good either - as the high water content in compost materials leads to leaching of chemicals from the landfill, and increasing pollution in our water systems. Composting is very easy to do and it gives returns every year with a greener garden. In the words of one of our local experts - E.B. "That stuff's like gold!"

Energy Consumption at Home

It's good to turn off your lights when you're not using them, but there are a few appliances around the house that use much more electricity than a light. Our clothes dryers and hot water heaters are two examples of high usage appliances.

Using less hot water reduces your overall energy usage significantly, so shorter showers, or cooler showers help reduce GHG emissions. However, washing your clothes in cold water also works the same way.

The clothes dryer also consumes a lot of energy. Using a clothes line during fair weather is a great option to safe money and reduce GHG gases. A few drying racks indoors through the winter works just as well and ensures you have some humidity in your home through the winter.

Buy Less Stuff

Basically, every time we buy something that is 'new' there has been energy consumed to make it, and GHG emissions released. The less we buy as new the less emissions are released. So some of the obvious options are to buy less stuff if possible. Other great options are to reuse, repair or buy used. A recent trend which is particular bad for the environment is 'Fast Fashion' and should be avoided.  This suggests that if we can buy something that will last longer, it's usually better for the environment, and will save you money in the long run.

This final item our is likely the most powerful to cause change in society. Every time we purchase something we are putting money into the economy to support the products we buy. One lesson we learned from the pandemic is that if people stop buying some products, they will stop being made. So we all could be a little more careful about where spend our money and what parts of the economy we decide to support, and start asking ourselves more often - "Do we really need this thing?"

Thanks for ready this long post. If you're interested, here's a list of 25 things to reduce your GHG emissions.