Nourishing our Neighborhood: Yogis raising neighbors to reduce Carbon Footprint
Written by Annika + Xander
This year, this group of yogis committed to reducing our city’s carbon footprint,
one footstep at a time.
Annika and Xander grew up in cloth diapers, sorted recyclables, and attended beach cleanups. They have always cared about the environment. In second grade, Annika noticed the recycle bins at school overflowed and the rest of the paper products always ended up in the trash. She wrote a letter to her teacher and the principal asking them to purchase additional recycle containers (and they did!) My birthday is on Earth Day, and that same year she wrote me this letter:
Fast forward 6 years later, when our City called upon volunteers to compete in participating in the Cool Block Challenge, Annika and I signed up to be leaders. Once the program started, Xander became a major researcher, data analyst, meeting planner, and co-leader as well! I have been so proud to watch them challenge their comfort zones and take on this leadership role with the heads of households in our neighborhood.
Here’s their story:
Annika:
The Cool City Challenge was released by the State of California through Governor Gavin Newsom in 2021 to promote “moonshot” strategies of achieving carbon neutrality by 2030. Irvine won the challenge and my mom and I trained to become Cool Block Leaders. We knocked door-to-door, sent out email invites, and created a team of five-to-eight households in our neighborhood. Our team has been working together for the last six months to become cleaner households by depending on and learning from one another. (We were also written about in The Vine!)
We’ve found the Cool Block strategy incredibly helpful for making us more disaster resilient and decreasing our personal carbon footprint. While big-industry change still needs to happen, we’ve been able to calculate our carbon footprints alongside our neighbors and decide what strategies would be best for decreasing our carbon footprint in relation to our electricity bills. In addition, we collectively compared water bills and found ways to consistently decrease our water usage through sprinklers, shorter showers (we bought these shower timers, which alone made a huge difference in our water bill), and spread the word about how solar panels and a power wall have decreased our footprint and made us disaster resilient. Not only has this experience made us a more carbon efficient cool block, but also one that spends less on electric and water bills!
While neighborhood groups may seem small at first glance, imagine over two hundred of these small, dependable groups. For citizens looking for a way to make a difference in the fight against climate change, this is a way to allow their household actions to make a huge difference and have a ripple effect. To extend that ripple, we want to now invite our family members and friends from all across the globe to adopt these cleaner lifestyle tips too!
You too can make a conscience decision to reduce your carbon usage by first identifying your household habits and where you can afford to make sensible reductions. Xander created a nifty carbon calculator to help you and is happy to chat or assist you with this process.
Xander:
During the cool block process, we were given a carbon calculator, but it was limited to members of our cool block, so I created my own version of that carbon calculator to share with family and friends. And I am here to consult with you through the process.
After filling out the form, you will be able analyze your results and they are automatically shared with me. Afterwards, we can meet over phone or zoom! (By the way, if the link to calculate air miles doesn’t work in the form, Here is a separate link for that part. So fill out this form and we can start a Parekh-Shah Family Challenge!
CARBON FOOTPRINT CALCULATOR LINK
You can either use the form below or click the link above and the form will appear on a separate page.
So….what will you learn?
Likely you will learn that natural gas, car fuel, trash, or air mileage contributes the most carbon released into the atmosphere.
So let’s talk about tips you can work on and then we can meet in 6 months to re-calculate our footprints and compare!
Trash:
Did you know that per gallon of trash you throw out, 101 pounds of CO2 are emitted? This can largely contribute to your carbon footprint. To reduce your trash follow the five R’s: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rot.
Refuse: When ordering take out, “refuse” the plastic utensils.
Recycle junk mail or find a way to stop receiving it here. The average household throws away 41 pounds of mail every year (that translates to 4,174 pounds of CO2 released)! Through the link above you can pay $2 for ten years to stop junk mail (that’s saving 41,740 pounds over the course of a decade!).
Reduce: Become a wise buyer by only asking for instant shipping only when you need it. My mom has been consolidating her Amazon orders and trying to shop less online.
Reuse: Reuse your plastic containers. My Nani reuses every plastic yogurt, nuts, and take-out container for food storage. This brings more life to “single-use” plastic containers. My mom reuses all her plastic cleaning product bottles and refills them with DIY household non-toxic cleaners (the easiest recipe is filtered water with a few drops of Dawn or Dr. Bronner’s soap for all purpose cleaning). Since I was born, we have never used paper towels. Instead we use cloth napkins at meal time and old t-shirts and rags for cleaning.
Rot: Participate in your city’s composting program. Seema Masi in Austin has a city program and the city of Irvine and San Diego are planning to implement one soon. We also backyard compost, which you can read about here. And do not waste food, buy what you need, and eat it before the expiration date.
Gas/Fuel:
Did you know one gallon of car fuel releases 20 pounds of CO2? Approximately 7.5 kilowatt-hours (KwH) = 1 gallon of gasoline, so you can reduce 0.6 pounds of CO2 per mile you drive in an electric car vs a gas car.
In order to reduce that large amounts of CO2 emitted by natural gas, invest in Ecostar versions of our washing machines, dryers, heaters, and/or electric or induction stoves. If you cook using gas, your gas stove releases a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere. Gas stoves are great for cooking, and might be hard to get rid of. But we tried a portable induction stovetop and it works just as fast! So when it is time to replace think about an induction cooktop.
To reduce air miles, fly when you need to, maybe 1-2 yearly trips. If you’ve already got that great! If work requires you to fly, try to tell your work to use more online meetings. If you fly super far to Europe or India then try to make that once maybe, every 3-4 years.
These are just a few ideas. After you calculate your footprint, let’s talk about the areas where you are able to reduce and come up with ideas together! It would nourish our hearts to consult with you, not to mention your neighborhood, and our planet!
We can’t wait to hear from you!