Essay On Carbon Footprint

744 Words3 Pages
It is, unfortunately, a common mindset among our society that giving an effort to conserve and improve our environment will be futile if we apply individual effort; as if anything we do is too small. On the contrary, these efforts collectively will become a great help for us in the long term. The average carbon footprint of a person living in the United States is about 20 tons per person as compared to the 5 tons per person worldwide. The definition of a carbon footprint is “the amount of carbon dioxide emitted due to the consumption of fossil fuels by a particular person, group, etc.” This definition is basically telling us that we should all make an attempt to change little things in our daily lives. The problem is that people usually do not want to implement changes to their routine for many reasons such as ignorance of how to actually help offset our carbon footprint, or just plain apathy, or laziness. Some of the ways we can offset our carbon footprints are simple, especially the ones pertaining to…show more content…
Most people do not want to add the extra work to sort their garbage. Many say it is too time-consuming and probably will not have much of an impact on the overall problem. Sometimes people are apathetic and do not care about how they can help. Ignorance adds to the list of why people do not recycle. It usually just comes down to not knowing how or what things to recycle. According to a study conducted by Upworthy.com, 50% of participants say when they are unsure will just throw away the item, 26% say they will look it up before throwing away the item, and 18% say they will put it into the recycling bin anyway. Also, many people do not realize the difference between recyclable and compostable. An example of this is the pizza box. Grease and cheese and other leftover items are still on it making it unrecyclable. It is supposed to be added to the
Open Document