How do you lower your carbon footprint? That's probably one of the questions that a lot of people have, but don't really look at. There's a lot of calculators out there. Some works well, some don't, but we always try and figure out like where our measurement is from an estimation point of view. And then how can we actually lower our
carbon footprint? Right? Because once you know where you're at, you can find ways to actually lower it through food purchases or clothing purchases or travel or lack of travel and so forth. And maybe the things you drive or your heating bill or the way you heat your home or cool your home. There's a lot of different ways, but sometimes it helps to have a bit of that guide. So today, what we're going to be going over is finding ways to lower your carbon footprint. Forbes
put out a great article on how to reduce your carbon footprint. And we're going to talk about some of the things that have been added to there. That's on this episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Hey
everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by
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you get access to three news articles every day Monday to Friday and of course, three different types of job advertisements if you want to dedicate more time to the ocean. But on today's episode, we're going to be talking something differently. I haven't done this in a little bit. We're going to be talking about lowering your carbon
footprint. And this is something that I always find interesting because over the last number of years, Well, previously, like 10, 20 years ago, there was a big focus on lowering your carbon footprint. Each individual should lower the carbon footprint. Then it kind of got out and being like, why do we put the onus just on individual people? The governments should be helping us lower the footprint by putting the regulations in terms of fossil
fuel cap and usage. oil and gas development, which all is encompassed coal and things like that, and going more toward renewable energy, that would have a bigger impact from a national and international level. So international deals were created, some were destroyed, and some were created again, and we've started to see that evolution. We started to see more and more countries work towards that, but it really depends on which party of that country is
in power for that government. For instance, the Trump administration that just won their election last week, Is going to be coming in in January and they are going to be taking apart a lot of the climate change policies So they've said that has been put up by the previous administration the Biden administration and so and we're gonna see a lot more development of oil and gas and fossil fuels
than we saw previously to this this administration that the u.s. Has now and the same thing in Canada, you know, the liberal government's in power right now They're trying to do as much as they can and That could be more of taking away policies like the carbon tax, taking away other policies for climate change, and reducing climate change, and putting in more policies to develop the tar sands, which is very dirty gas that is made from Canada. And we're going to see a lot more
on just degrading the environment. That's just, for some reason, that's the Conservative Party at this point, in my opinion, and from historical records. Regardless, people have to deal with the governments that have been elected in a democracy, right? Whether we agree with the government's policies or not, they're put in place because people wanted them, the majority of people wanted them in place. And so now it's time to really start focusing on your individual footprint and how
you can reduce that over time. don't help in the overall schemes, but it can help you feel better about yourself to say, hey, you know what? I'm actually thinking more sustainably. I'm thinking more about the planet and that's making me feel better from a mental health perspective because I know it helps me. So the first thing to do is to figure out what your carbon footprint is today. Don't judge yourself too much. Try to figure it out. There's a great tool for the Nature Conservancy I'll
link to it in the article, I'll link to the article that has it in there. I've tried to use it, you know, just full disclosure, I'm having trouble getting past the first part. I don't know if it's just because I'm coming in from Canada and maybe it didn't like, it looked like it liked my address but it didn't really. So I'd love to
hear if you have any trouble with it or you have success with it. Please let me know, hit me up on Instagram at HowToProtectTheOcean or on YouTube or comment below on the YouTube video for this episode or comment in Spotify. But I'd love to hear here So that's the first thing, get what you have and understand where you are in your carbon footprint. The other thing to look at, according to this Forbes article that talked to sustainability leaders, they talked about buying vegetables instead of
beef. So when it comes to making more eco-friendly choices, shopping choices, experts generally advise buying local or artisanal products rather than mass-produced food and fast fashion. So the first thing, let's talk about the food. Local farm food is usually pretty good you try it want to try and stay away from any imported food if you can try and stay away from any Mass-produced like beef or things like that try and go to local farmers to get the beef if
you can I know groceries are expensive. So I'm not expecting everybody to go bankrupt over doing it. Sometimes I can't buy the perfect type of meat or vegetable because it's just too expensive, trying to find where it is, or it becomes almost impossible to get on a regular basis. So do what you can in doing that research. Talk to local farmers. Talk to maybe some farmers markets and find out where you can get. The best is to start up for your local farmers
market. and see where that goes. But livestock are a major source of methane emissions and a powerful greenhouse gas, many times more potent than carbon dioxide. So shifts from meat to more plant-based proteins in your diet could reduce foods by a food footprint by 50 to 80% that are far greater effective in simply choosing locally sourced beef. If you can go more towards that vegetable-based diet, it's also better for you in a lot of ways. You can still have some protein, some
meat, some seafood, and so forth. Just be careful where you get it from. And I think that's really important. But locally raised beef are more sustainable choices than factory farmed, of course. Same with chicken. With your fish, obviously wild is probably better, but even some aquacultured sources can be good, but do your research in trying to find that. Then the other one was talking about fast fashion versus, you know, sort of
wear wool. So wear wool instead of fast fashion with synthetic fibers. So stay away from clothes with synthetics of fibers, which is very difficult because most clothes are synthetic fibers and most fashion is fast fashion. You know, I am a father of
two girls. Shopping is happening in this household and a lot of the times it's frustrating because the items they buy, you can tell it from fast fashion, they're very, very cheap, which makes it really nice as a family for in today's economy to be able to buy clothes for my kids, to be able to to be able to wear something that they like, but it's also, is it the best for the environment? Can we lower our footprint just with where these clothes are coming from? Is it better to buy less that
it's more expensive but it'll last longer? Staying away from synthetic fibers is great. Staying away from fast fashion brands, which is awesome. There's a recent article that was shown Zara's, a fast fashion company, has been using upsell of reused denim, but it's actually new denim. And so they're trying to use that upcycle and it's greenwashed, but not in a good, like it's just greenwashing, which your company does not wanna be associated with.
Nobody wants to be associated with that. So you have to be careful when you start to see these words like upcycled or recycled. Are they actually recycled? Are they actually upcycled? The best thing to do that is cheaper, I always tell my kids too, if they want to buy their clothes, go to a thrift shop and buy thrift clothes because at least it's better to reuse those clothes than it is to buy new ones in fast fashion.
You can get them for just as cheap, maybe cheaper than the fast fashion brands. So that's always good. And the third way is to invest in sustainable business practices. So in this one, it's actually really interesting. So the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Compass offers a practical guide for entrepreneurs and executives who want to promote more environmentally friendly processes at work. So they can allow... to distribute
to committees, environmental committees at work. And those committees can actually put together the guides and say, hey, how can we adapt this to our business practices? And how can we become more sustainable at our workplace? It empowers your staff, if you own a business, it empowers your staff to be more conscious, to make them feel and do better and use more sustainable practices in their life. I mean, I know a lot of times people are working from home,
some people are working at work. So having these committees for both situations, if you're a hybrid workplace or you work completely remote or you work at work, to have these guides to be able to shell out to employees if you're part of an HR or human resource department would be great to have. for your employees. Employees can lead the charge on disruptive change by advocating policies to reduce environmental impact and improve corporate
transparency. At Scripps Health, an employee-led sustainability council brought forth improvements in operations across a variety of areas, including construction, energy, food, grounds, recycling, supply chain, transportation, and vendor partnerships. So another step could be swapping older incandescent light bulbs with energy starts sufficient or certified bulbs that can reduce power consumption and lighting fixture of a lighting
fixture by 90% according to the EPA. So there are some ways that could really help the business save money but all and empower their employees to put these guides together for their their workplace. So A quick and easy guide, three quick easy steps. Stay away from, you know, highly farmed or, you know, factory farm type of food. Get more local, you know, connect with your local farmers at your farmers markets.
Usually every place has them and you'll be able to, in North America anyway that I know, and you'll be able to connect more with, you know, people who are creating your food. You get to know the people who are creating food instead of just buying it at a grocery store. So there are always farmers markets around, there's always places, sometimes there's companies that create these ways of getting vegetables from different farmers locally or
meat sources from different farmers if you're looking, it's a silly meat. And then of course stay away from fast fashion brands, go more wool. Try and stay away from highly processed and synthetic fibers. And then of course the last one is putting these energy and sustainability practices into your workplace. so that you can empower your employees as well as do some really great savings with your company. So that's always good for companies you save on the bottom line.
And you are more sustainable after that. So it's always great. Stay away from greenwashing, of course, and do your best to lower your carbon footprint. And of course, always start off with a calculator that at least gives you an estimate of what you're doing. Start off... I'll put the link in the show notes. and you can check that out. But
thank you again for listening. I'd love to hear if you go through this calculator, what your level's at, how much do you think you can lower it by, or if you've lowered it in the past and followed a similar process, I'd love to hear from you. Just put a comment on the YouTube channel or Spotify, or send me a DM on Instagram, at howtoprotecttheocean. I'd love to hear from you. That's at howtoprotecttheocean. But thank you so much for joining
me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin.