11/16/2021
Certain types of consumption behaviors are far more worse off for the environment than others...
Just three types of our household activity areas - Food, Household Operations, and Transportation account for the majority of environmental impacts.
So what are the main contributors to environmental harm in each of these areas?
1. Transportation
Household use of Transportation, ranging from recreational boating to cars to passenger air travel, is responsible for 28% to 51% of greenhouse gases and air pollution and also 23% of toxic water pollution. Our use of Transportation even poses a significant threat to wildlife through the use of land for roads and highways.
2. Household Operations
A. Heating, hotwater, & air conditioning: For heating, most consumers rely on either electricity, natural gas, oil, or wood... surprisingly wood is the most polluting due to very high emissions of particulate matter, which has a strong evidence of causing serious health problems.
B. Water, Sewage & Solid waste disposal: Ordinary municipal sewage remains a major source of water pollution and accounts for about 11% of total water pollution. Solid waste disposal contributes to environmental problems mainly through air pollution generated by trash incinerators.
C. Products: Cleaning products and their packaging turn out to be the leading source of toxic air pollution, and is responsible for about 9% all emissions linked to this category.
3. Food
Meat and poultry consumption has a large environmental impact... About 860 million acres of land (40% of U.S land) is used for grazing livestock and growing grains for feeding livestock (most of which I used for household consumption) which often greatly diminishes its ability to support natural wildlife. Then there are the effects of fertilizers, pesticides, animal wastes, erosion on water quality, methane emissions, air pollution and not to mention greenhouse gas emissions from energy usage.
We are aware that single use plastics account for a small amount of total waste generated, however, we encourage you to look at other individual consumption habits & determine how you can lessen your impact on the environment!