First of all calculate your carbon footprint using our Kids Carbon Calculator. It won't take long and it will show you what sort of impact your lifestyle is having on the environment.
Think of some changes you could make – watching less TV, taking a shower instead of a bath, sharing a car on the school run, turning the lights off etc. Calculate your footprint again, this time imagining that you have already made those changes. That way you can see what a difference they will make.
Here are some ideas of how you might do something positive for the environment:
- Ride a bike or walk instead of going by car
- Turn the lights off when you leave the room
- Cut your TV watching. Don't leave the TV on standby – turn it off at the wall.
- Take a shower instead of a bath – it uses less hot water as long as you keep it short.
- Recycle as much as possible. Recycle cans, bottles, plastic bags, and newspapers. When you recycle, you send less rubbish to the landfill and you help save natural resources, like trees, oil, and elements such as aluminium.
- Don't waste food.
- Plant trees. Planting trees is fun and a great way to reduce greenhouse gases. Trees absorb carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, from the air.
- When You Buy, Buy Cool Stuff. Buy recycled products which don't use 'new' resources and don't require so much energy to make. Buy energy efficient electrical goods.
Ask your parents to:
Try not to fly, or at least to fly less (the emissions from flights are really high). Take the train instead: a short haul flight emits six times as much carbon per passenger as a high speed train, and 12 times as much as a coach.
- Use low energy light bulbs.
- Turn the thermostat down.
- Make sure their loft and hot water tank are properly insulated to stop heat from being lost unnecessarily.
- Switch to 'green energy'. Companies like 'Good energy' offer energy produced by solar power and wind turbines.
- Install their own solar panels or wind turbine.
- Make their car as energy efficient as possible. Choose a smaller engine: small is beautiful. A 2.0 litre engine emits 40% more CO2 per mile than a car with an engine size 1.4 – 2.0 litres. They could also switch their vehicle to LPG (autogas) – it's 40% cheaper and greener. As well as cutting CO2 emissions by 20%, they will also cut production of harmful gases such as carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide by more than half.
And don't forget to tell your friends and family what you have learnt!
What can 1 million children do?
Our target is for 1 million children to participate in Low Carbon Day.
If 1 million children
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watched 15 minutes less TV a day, it would save 8,000 tonnes of CO2 per year;
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turned the TV off instead of leaving it on standby, it would save around 10,000 tonnes of CO2 per year;
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cut the usage of a couple of 40W bulbs by an hour a day, it would save 12,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.
If 1 million children did all of these things for a year it would save 30,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.
And if 1 million families cut the use of their car by a mile a day it would save a further 100,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.