A digital illustration showing a white puffy cloud labelled "CO2" with green arrows pointing downward.

How to lose 28,000 pounds

Written by Charles Gale on September 19, 2023. Posted in Carbon Footprint.

In our last post, we tracked down the ideal carbon footprint for individuals to cut emissions and blunt the impacts of climate change.

1.87 tons per year.

That’s the first step. Now let’s break it down to a daily goal.

1.87 tons (the target footprint) equals 3,740 pounds, or 10.25 pounds per day.

Right now, we (Americans) are at 16 tons, or 32,000 pounds / 88 pounds per day.

So, we need to lose 28,260 lbs. (around 77 pounds per day).

Heavier than you think

77 pounds sounds like A LOT of carbon. Isn’t carbon kinda…weightless?

It turns out carbon dioxide is 1.5 times heavier than air.

The folks at the MIT Climate Portal offer visualizations to help us wrap our heads around this.

A metric ton of carbon dioxide (the measurement used by scientists) takes up about as much space as a cube the length, width, and height of a telephone pole. While it may not seem like a gas can weigh that much, a metric ton is about the weight of a great white shark.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t mind the thought of cutting a few great white sharks from my life (I saw Jaws at the wrong age).

But we’re talking a daily goal of 77 pounds, which is about the size of a small Doberman Pinscher.

How do I cut an attack dog out of my carbon diet?

We have some ideas.

Small (and big) actions add up. Here are the carbon emissions you can cut in one year by making a few lifestyle changes:

Commit to weekly Meatless Mondays: 416 lbs.
Use one gallon of gas less per week: 1,040 lbs.
Run the dishwasher only when full: 100 lbs.
Switch to cold-water clothes washing: 1,600 lbs.
Switch 10 incandescent bulbs for LEDs: 1,825 lbs.
Carpool to work every day: 2,000 lbs.
Switch from gasoline-powered car to electric vehicle: 11,400 lbs.
Use a ceiling fan instead of a window AC: 2,700 lbs.
Take one less round-trip flight: 4,000 lbs.
Switch to all-renewable energy for your home: 5,200 lbs.

Most of these ideas are designed to address the four major contributors to carbon footprints: food, consumption, transportation, and household energy.

But you can see how you’re doing today by calculating your footprint at carbonfootprint.com. Then use the EPA’s calculator for practical ideas (like the above) around saving on carbon (and money).

Weight loss begins at home

Being in the homebuilding business, we focus on that final carbon contributor—household energy.

We’ve been busy lately putting together a slew of energy-saving ideas you can put into action. Existing homeowners can make a few investments around the home that’ll pay off in the long run with lower energy bills.

They include heat pumps, induction stoves, insulation, and solar panels.

Homebuilders can look to innovate with sustainable alternatives to fossil-fuel guzzling appliances or carbon-emitting dinosaurs like concrete.

These include cold-formed steel, recyclable steel footings, and microgrids.

Getting off on offsets

Struggling to get to 1.87? Try a carbon offset program.

These let individuals (and companies) offset their footprint by paying to reduce emissions elsewhere. You can buy carbon offsets to compensate for any or all of your own personal carbon emissions.

Offsetting one ton of carbon will help capture or destroy one ton of greenhouse gasses that would otherwise have been released into the atmosphere.

A slew of programs exists, but Treehugger vetted a bunch for transparency and real-world results and narrowed it down to 6 worthy contenders.

1.87 will take some trimming, but there are a lot of paths to get there.

We’ve got your cutting covered

Every component of a Momo Home is designed for energy efficiency, from the appliances to the insulation to the walls.

What’s more, just as apps can track your daily steps, our smart technology tracks your energy use, your first step to a better carbon diet. We’ll get you down to 1.87.

Cheers.

Mike

Mike McAllister is head of story for Momo Homes.

Illustration showing green footprints moving to the right across a white background.

Track your footprint like you track your footsteps

Written by Charles Gale on September 14, 2023. Posted in Carbon Footprint.

What’s the carbon footprint equivalent of 10,000 steps a day?

By now we all have that friend who interrupts conversations to peer at their app and gauge the steps they’ve racked up so far that day. (Recent studies call this number into question, but let’s not get distracted.)

We also all know we should cut our carbon footprint. But to what size is a question that goes unanswered in a lot of think-pieces about global emissions.

We need a hard number like 10,000 steps a day

I think I’ve found it.

First, some basics:

The Nature Conservancy defines a carbon footprint as: The total amount of greenhouse gasses (including carbon dioxide and methane) that are generated by our actions.

It’s pretty important that we collectively avoid raising the global temperatures by two degrees celsius by 2050. Why?

I’ll let NASA be the messenger: A 2-degree rise in global temperatures is considered a critical threshold above which dangerous and cascading effects of human-generated climate change will occur.

Something about that word “cascading” feels especially dire.

To avoid this 2-degree rise, the average annual global carbon footprint for individuals (not industries) needs to drop to under 2 tons by 2050.

The Columbia Climate School goes one step further and puts the exact number at 1.87 tons per person annually.

Our magic number is 1.87

1.87 tons may not have the ring of 10,000 steps a day, but if you need a handy way to remember it, T.J. Hooker and Beverly Hills Cop taught me that California Penal Code 187 stands for homicide.

So think of 1.87 as your carbon killer.

<Groan>.

1.87 tons sounds like a lot. But the current per capita average footprint for us Americans is (at least) 16 tons. Compare that to the global average of 4 tons and, well, “gloat” may not be the first word to come to mind.

Your own current number could be a lot different, depending on stuff like your zip code, home energy usage, car and mileage, annual air travel, and predilection for beef.

But even so, some drastic carbon dieting is in order.

Since the first step toward change is awareness, it’s a good idea to figure out your own current baseline. Then you can take action.

In our next post, we’ll show you how.

Cheers,

Mike

Mike McAllister is head of story for Momo Homes.