4 Ways to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint Without Leaving the Sofa – Architectural Digest

So, how do you make the switch, without getting up from your comfy sofa? First, choose a renewable energy provider; the most common sources are wind, solar, tidal, hydroelectric, biomass, and fuel cell. New Yorkers can compare providers here. I use Green Mountain Energy, which is currently available in eight states nationwide. Go to the provider’s site and have your energy bill account number on hand—this is all you’ll need to sign up online or over the phone. You will keep paying your electric bill the same way. There is no contract or fee to switch, and you don’t need any special equipment. It couldn’t be easier. I only saw about a 10% increase in my utility bill, but as more and more people in my city make the switch, the price will go down, so we’re in this together.

Clean Your Data

Digital technologies now account for 4% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. And with our streaming, photo-snapping, 5G lifestyle, that’s estimated to double by 2025. This is in part because storing and transferring data requires a lot of energy. When you back up and store your data on the cloud, it’s not literally floating in the sky. It’s physical, sitting on a server somewhere in the world. Thankfully, there’s a lot you can do here to reduce your digital consumption.

  1. Don’t be a digital hoarder. Clean out your files the same way you would if you had a literal filing cabinet. Be a digital minimalist—and save money—by signing up for a smaller cloud-storage plan. By imposing limits on myself, I had to confront that I was hoarding files with names like “presentation-FINAL-FINAL-version-C.pdf.” I don’t need those, or 14 of the 15 selfies I took when I caught good light and was feeling myself.

Your cloud is really just a data center powered by physical servers that consume a tremendous amount of electricity. Yikes.

Photo by Cybrain/Getty Images

  1. Cloud storage is admittedly impossible to give up altogether, so choose a clean(er) cloud server. These companies either generate their own renewable electricity to power servers or purchase credits (like what you did with your energy source earlier). According to Greenpeace, Amazon Web Services holds a majority share of the market yet the lowest green commitments. Apple, Dropbox, and Microsoft are better cloud options.

  2. Host your website with a company that runs on renewable energy. The Green Web Foundation offers a directory of hosts from around the world.

Offset Every Time You Jet-Set

Purchasing offsets is a way to compensate for your personal carbon emissions. To be clear, offsetting is not a solution to a fossil-fuel lifestyle; you should take steps to reduce your energy use, and switch to renewable energy sources. But for the stuff we simply can’t give up altogether, like air travel, offsetting does help and is something you can accomplish in your sweatpants. The first step is to calculate your footprint. You can do this every time you fly, annually, or even retroactively to make up for your whole, entire life! The calculator will give you a number of tonnes of carbon dioxide you have emitted, which is then converted into dollars you can donate to a cause that will offset your carbon output.

While there are many organizations that will happily take your money, you need to be a smart shopper when it comes to offsetting, and beware of controversial offsetting practices that may actually be doing more harm than good. For example, tree planting may be incentivizing trees to be planted like crops: in single-file lines, requiring a lot of water, covered in chemicals, without biodiversity. In some cases, it has been reported that tree-planting organizations are a greenwashing tool for land-grabbing, and indigenous people and villagers have been kicked off the land they survived on in the name of “conservation”—certainly not what I want to do with my money! But planting trees is just one of many options. The safest and best bet may be to support renewable energy projects or carbon-capture technologies, which collect methane gas from landfills. I am sharing the UN Climate Neutral Now site because it has been vetted to me by experts, 100% of your donation goes to the cause, and they have many projects to choose from.