Three easy ways to eat up less carbon

Maybe you're not into all this green stuff or maybe you just feel powerless in the face of so much information and smog. To keep it simple, here are three easy ways to eat your way to a smaller carbon footprint.

Wait, what's a carbon footprint again? A carbon footprint refers to the impact your lifestyle has on the environment. It includes the primary footprint, which measures choices of energy consumption (for transportation and at home and work), and the secondary footprint, which measures carbon emissions resulting from the creation and transportation of products and foods we consume.

3 Easy Ways to Eat Up Less Carbon:

1.  Filter your tap water instead of drinking bottled water. By purchasing bottled water, we encourage the carbon-emitting manufacture of the plastic that is used to make water bottles, causing a primary negative impact on the environment. In purchasing water at your local convenience store, your secondary footprint is enlarged by the transportation required to deliver the water from the plant to the retailer.

How-To: Make a small investment in an on-tap Brita filter and a water bottle for the road, instead of collecting hundreds of bottles a year at grocery stores and quickie marts. Not only is it better for the world, it's much cheaper for your wallet.

2.  Avoid buying too many foods that travel vast distances to reach your table. Produce that is not seasonal or regional has probably been flown to your store in large jet aircrafts that use vast amounts of petroleum-based fuel that, in turn, release vast amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. If you buy less of those foods, your store will catch on and order fewer shipments.

How-To: Go to localharvest.org to find out which foods and food companies are local to your area. Do your best to buy more of those foods than anything else.

3. Avoid foods that have been packaged excessively. As with bottled water, foods engulfed in plastics and papers encourage manufacturing processes that release carbon into the environment. The problem is ballooned by the carbon emitted from these packaging materials as they decompose.

How-To: Instead of buying Lunchables or a similar ready-made meal that has a plastic tray, plastic-covered napkin, and cardboard box, make a sandwich and pack it in a reusable container with a cloth napkin. The plastic used around a loaf of bread, a pack of lunchmeat, and a log of cheese creates much less environmental and monetary waste per meal than one of those prepackaged lunches.