How We've Reduced Our Carbon Footprint

The carbon footprint for my family is currently 9.62 tonnes, or 2.4 per head. That may sound a lot but the national average per head is 9.6 in the UK and about 15 to 20 in Australia and the U.S. (Check out your own country's average here).

It's thought that we need to get the average down to 2 tonnes per head worldwide to make it sustainable in the long term. That might seem like a ridiculously low figure but our footprint shows that it is possible without having to go back to the Stone Age or spending loads of money.

The main things that have contributed to low footprint are:

• We switched our electric bills to a green tariff taking 1.4t off our footprint.
• We work locally, so our annual mileage is about 5k for each of our 2 cars.
• We apply these travel rules when deciding on our holidays.
• We recycle/freecycle/compost as much as possible.
• We buy as much local and seasonal produce as possible.
• We don't go mad on getting the very latest gadgets.
• We eat mostly white meat and fish.

We have not bought solar panels, wind turbines, brand new low emission cars or any other expensive item. And we don't do anything that we'd consider to be 'putting ourselves out' like going completely veggie.

There are still things we can do to reduce our footprint like improving the insulation in our loft and replacing our cars with used ones that have lower emissions, so we may get very close to that 2 tonnes per head target within the next year.