It is high time for every Engineer and, frankly every human on Earth to consider their ability towards reducing their carbon footprint to positively impact the environment. You might not believe that the efforts of one person can help reduce environmental pollution but if every Engineer reading this made a firm and conscious decision to boldly lead a green lifestyle using these five effective tips, just think of how many resources will be saved. As Engineers, we work in teams and our role is to impact communities. Luckily, we can do our part in reducing our carbon footprint without sacrificing our lifestyle. This can ultimately set a good example and precedence for others to follow.
One Discovery has been constructed to be bold, stunning, functional, and inspirational. Beyond the focus on the wellbeing of people who use it daily, sustainability was considered in its design and construction. As a result, the building has received a six Green Star as-built, making it one of a handful of projects with this rating. Six stars is the highest rating denoting a score of 75 and above (out of a 100), and represents ‘World Leadership’ in environmental sustainable building practices.
The concept of green construction and buildings seeks to put together the three dimensions of sustainability and ensure benefit through profit, a healthier planet, and the wellbeing of people. Although new technologies are constantly being developed to complement the current practices in creating green structures, the common objective of green buildings is to reduce the overall impact of the built environment on human health and the natural environment by:
- Efficiently using energy, water, and other resources.
- Protecting occupant health and improving employee productivity.
- Reducing waste, pollution, and environmental degradation.
Fortunately, these are all principles that every Engineer can duplicate in their daily living as well. Your transition towards reducing your carbon footprint will ensure better environmental health, human well-being and also to save up on some money.
1. Being a Minimalist Helps in Reducing your Carbon Footprint
In today’s digital age, with new trends popping up on the internet every day, there is a lot of peer pressure to keep up with the latest styles. Choosing to live simple can help with reducing a lot of the stress that we undertake in our daily living, as you make well-thought-out and conscious decisions about any purchase that you make. Your stress will ultimately reduce because you will have fewer items to worry about losing as you live life on the resources that are a necessity to you. A minimalist lifestyle encourages one to live within their means in an uncluttered manner. The true essence of this is to determine what provides us the most value in life and choosing not to take anything in excess. This is by no means a radical lifestyle but rather an optimal one with ensuring that one lives life with all the minimal things and yet is still satisfied intentionally. One can build a minimal lifestyle by:
- Choosing to have experiences rather than things
- Choosing to buy what we need and not what we want
- Finding time for the things that matter such as pursuing hobbies and indulging in activities that relax you
- Choosing to live in such a way that general waste and effect to the environment are minimal.
2. Reduce your Carbon Footprint by Going Paperless
When you are fully digital you can access your documents from any device at various locations. Furthermore, taking your files from paper to digital improves shareability, searchability, productivity and reduces storage space. Going paperless offers a wide range of benefits that if we were to optimize our digital tools we can be able to leverage from a flexible, uncluttered, and safe lifestyle. Approximately 20% of print jobs are never even retrieved from printers and 50% of printed material goes straight into the bin. That does not only result in lots of unnecessary waste but can also leave sensitive information exposed to anyone. With the latest tech readily available, now is the time to break free from being paper-dependent and help in reducing waste, time, and costs. The following tips can help go paperless:
- Signatures can now be digital by making use of digital tools to sign agreements, inspections, minutes, and quantity sheets. This helps to cut down on paper, and speeds up the process of signing and sharing agreements through programs and apps such as Eversign, SodaPDF, or Signwell.
- If you do a lot of networking visiting conferences and engaging with many potential service providers or clients daily, you can make use of digital apps to help quickly scan and store business cards on your smartphone. This will help reduce having a stack of business cards that you will easily forget in your wallet, on your desk, or in your drawer.
- Saving actual space by replacing cabinets with digital file-sharing via Google Drive, Dropbox, or Microsoft Office OneDrive.
- Managing your tasks better and projects without having to write down to-do lists and using apps like Google Tasks and Todoist.
- Use online invoicing to handle client payments. Physical invoices and checks can quickly add up to significant paper waste. You can take advantage of online invoicing through some online invoicing systems such as FreshBooks, Wave, or Invoice Simple.
The moral of the story is that advances in smart technology can make reducing your carbon footprint and the switch to a paperless way of life not only doable but also easy. Implement some digital tools to show your team how effective they can be in achieving your paperless goals, all while improving productivity. If the whole team is on board, the experience can be quite enriching and surprising for everybody involved.
3. Refusing Single-Use is Vital to Reducing your Carbon Footprint
Single-use plastics are the scourge of modern society. Everything from coffee cups to plastic cutlery, disposable razors, and straws will most likely be wasteful. The single-use plastic derivative will easily invade your green-seeking lifestyle. However, you can easily avoid this by being mindful and planning. If you plan to grab a coffee before work, take your cup. Fancy a takeaway? Take your Tupperware box for the restaurant to use. Always remember to opt for paper straws where available and refuse plastic alternatives. Have a set of steel straws that are easily washable and reusable in your household.
Reducing the number of resources you use daily is also as easy as keeping a bottle with you. Staggeringly, it is estimated that 1 million plastic bottles are bought and used every single minute across the globe. A scary fact. The solution is simple: keep a glass or reusable water bottle with you at all times, that way you are sure never to use another plastic water bottle again.
4. Waste Well
Part of living includes wasting. There is no escape from the fact that we all use items and produce waste. However, what if you were told that some people could fit their entire years’ worth of rubbish into a single jar. Impressive, right? Living a zero-waste life does not entail a complete cessation of garbage production, it simply requires you to waste well and waste efficiently. Recycle all you can, compost your kitchen and garden waste, refuse to buy and use single-use items, and reduce your burden upon plastic. (For more information visit goingzerowaste.com)
5. Use Natural Products
Aside from using energy-efficient appliances, there are many ways to make your kitchen more sustainable. Doing so starts with making sure that the products you use are eco-friendly. Conventional cleaning supplies are often very toxic to the environment. The thousands of chemicals in these products tend to be non-biodegradable and pollute rivers, streams, and water sources for years to come. Switching to natural cleaning products significantly adds on to reducing your carbon footprint, has minimal impact on the ecosystem and promotes environmental harmony.
One other thing to consider is how many bottles, tubes, and tubs you use every day during your morning routine, I bet that the number is around 5-10. Those 5-10 plastic containers will require to be replaced in a month. Instead of relying upon these products, whip out your essential oils and make your beauty products. You can easily look up YouTube videos on how to make your bath oils, face oils, face wash, body wash, shampoos, and conditioners all in your kitchen. These will not require too much effort or time.
6. There is more you can do towards reducing your carbon footprint
Depending on how eager you are there are many other small changes that you can implement towards reducing your carbon footprint, that can positively affect the environment and your pocket. Here are a few more:
- Using reusable menstrual cups
- Using cold water in your washing machine when washing clothes.
- Unplugging unused chargers and appliances.
- Collecting rainwater and using it to water your houseplants and garden.
- Using products with recycle tubes. Toothpaste tubes are often made off different kinds of plastics, as well as containing a metal layer (in order to keep the minty fresh). In general, they are not recyclable although there have been breakthroughs by Colgate their new recycle tubes and Terracycle to offer recycling schemes for oral care products.
- Switching to LED and lower energy lightbulbs
- Using a bicycle instead of the regular four-wheel to commute to nearby locations.
- Taking your food to work.
- Stopping fast fashion and avoiding purchasing cheaper clothes sprayed with genetically engineered cotton and harmful polluting dyes. This will prevent chemical run-off in our waterways and oceans. You can buy responsibly produced fashion from retailers such as H&M and ASOS Africa. Reduce the number of clothes you buy and throw away, re-work and re-style your clothing, donate and recycle wherever possible.
