Your Carbon Footprint And You

How quickly the world has changed in only one generation. Counting carbon emissions has now become something that everyone thinks about and many have become somewhat adept at doing. It all has to do with what you do and how you do it. Many of the worlds modern machines spew out the stuff but of course some do it more than others. Here are some examples of our modern day gadgets and things and how much carbon they emit in pounds in just one year. An I-Pod puts out about 6lbs. of carbon a year. One 60 watt Lightbulb puts out about 100lbs. If you switched to a more efficient flourescent light of the same wattage it would put out only about 25lbs and it would last years longer so you would not have to replace it nearly as often. A new high definition digital tv would put out about 550lbs. of carbon in a year. An S.U.V. about 15,300lbs. A 747 jetliner would, as you would expect, do the most damage in this regard. It spits out about 2600lbs. per passenger for every 5000 miles flown.
It is true however that you can lighten your carbon footprint by changing over to more modern and energy efficient appliances in a significant way. The earlier example of the flourescent lightbulb is one. An even greater example would be a new fridge. There are refridgerators on the market now that can run on as little as 250-300 kilowatt hours a year. That is less than 1 a day. Older outdated models usually run on about 12-20 kilowatts hours a day depending on how you set the temperature controls. A switch like that over time would be a huge savings on your energy bill.