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Individual's Secondary Carbon Reducing Lifestyle Behaviours

Secondary Footprint is a measure of the indirect CO2 emissions from the whole lifecycle of products we use.

Become a Locavore. When you choose out of season organic food which has journeyed overseas instead of locally grown, the Carbon Footprint caused by the container ships outweighs any benefit you're going to get.  Locavores contend that eating what's available locally is healthier.   

Locavore is the New Oxford American Dictionary 2007 Word of the Year which was coined around 2003 by four San Francisco women who proposed that residents should try to eat only local food [ie. grown or produced within a 100-mile radius without the need for extra preservatives].  Other regional movements have emerged since then, though some groups refer to themselves as “localvores” rather than “locavores.”    

The “Locavores” movement encourages consumers to support their area's agriculture by visiting a farmer's market and looking for regional produce at the supermarket by reading the label to identify which country the food is from.  No need for Australians to buy Californian oranges in the Autumn.  Buy Australian wine and beer.  Many imports are made in sweatshops where people labour in dangerous work environments and aren't paid fairly.  Reducing the demand for imports not only reduces our Carbon Footprint but also sends a message to big business that we want more nutritious and tastier produce.

Locavores shun supermarket offerings as an environmentally friendly measure, since shipping food over long distances requires more fuel for transportation.

You may pay more for locally produced, fair trade and organic products, but it may even out when you buy less of everything else and reduce carbon intensive activities like long haul deliver of produce from across the state, country or planet.  When you do things to save the planet you not only save money, but your life gets simpler, healthier and happier.  Simplify, Simplify. We'll all live better with less-processed, packaged and industrially produced stuff carted here from across the planet.

Make Your Own Salad:  Use less bagged and pre-cut produce because they use a lot of resources to produce.

Make Your Habitat Good For Humanity. Use locally produced materials and buy certified sustainable harvested wood and wood composites for decking and garden projects.  

Your Garden Isn't As Green As You Think.  A manicured lawn is a symbol of the oil culture because it symbolises –

¨                       a wasted opportunity to grow oxygen makers and reduce your Carbon Footprint;

¨                       unnatural; and

¨                       wasted two stroke and extravagance. 

Let your water-guzzling lawn in your backyard flourish or flounder, and if the latter then replace it with native plants and shade trees which use less water and nourish birds and bees.  

Sort and recycle: Use the recycling bins in your neighbourhood. Before throwing anything away, think! Can it be recycled?    

Compost your waste if you have a garden as it breaks down to useful mulch.  Composting food waste for the garden helps return valuable nutrients to the soil.  The more you recycle, the less waste goes to the landfill.

Create a garden of your own: Try growing your own fruit and vegetables in your own garden.

Hug A Tree It's OK. It's cool now. Better yet, plant a tree. ideally a citrus tree, which will not only provide you with fruit, with zero Carbon Footprint, but your tree will breathe in CO2 to create oxygen - rendering your fruit carbon negative!

Avoid Bottled water.  Tap water is safe to drink in most parts of Australia, yet people still buy bottled water. If the bottle is labelled as being from volcanic springs, it has probably been imported from some distance with a large Carbon Footprint from the flight / shipping, plus emissions due to making the bottle and / or recycling it.

Try to buy Australian made clothing:  It isn’t easy, because most of it has been priced out of competition.

Buy Recycled Products
Products made from recycled materials often require less energy to produce than those made from virgin materials. It takes 75% less energy to make steel items from recycled steel.

Purchase the goods with less packaging.  Less energy to produce the package, less waste that goes to the landfill, and fewer trips to dispose of your trash.

Remove yourself from junk mail lists: Your mailbox is stuffed full of CO2 every day. The average adult gets 15 kg of junk mail per year.  Phone or e-mail whoever is mailing you stuff and tell them to stop and to not sell, exchange or give your info to other commercial interests. Write this on their envelopes and mail it to them. When you buy online or through a catalogue, or buy a magazine subscription, tell these vendors the same “No junk mail”. 

No Trash Bags. Don't use specially bought plastic bags—line your kitchen garbage container with newspaper or left over plastic bags which we still accumulate no matter how hard we try to avoid them.

Don’t be hypnotised by the advertising gurus.  Before purchasing something that the TV adds tell you that you can’t do without, ask yourself if you already have it or something similar that can be reused.  Can you buy it second-hand at a thrift store?