Carbon Footprint is the sum of all emissions of greenhouse gases like CO2 (carbon dioxide), which were induced by our activities in a given time frame. It is a measure of the impact our activities have on the environment, and in particular climate change. It relates to the amount of greenhouse gases produced in our day-to-day lives through burning fossil fuels for electricity, heating and transportation etc.
CARBON FOOTPRINT REDUCTION
Reduce - Altering the design, manufacture, or use of products and materials to reduce the amount and toxicity of what gets thrown away.
We should all avoid products with excessive packaging
The production of the packaging uses additional energy
The extra volume and weight will have to be transported (by trucks, aircraft, ships etc.)
The packaging will be thrown out and will need to be collected from your home by a waste disposal truck
Packaging then takes more space at land fill sites
Reuse is to use an item more than once. This includes conventional reuse where the item is used again for the same function, and new-life reuse where it is used for a new function. In contrast, recycling is the breaking down of the used item into raw materials which are used to make new items. By taking useful products and exchanging them, without reprocessing, reuse help us save time, money, energy and resources
Recycling involves processing used materials into new products to prevent waste of potentially useful materials, reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reduce energy usage, reduce air pollution (from incineration) and water pollution (from landfilling) by reducing the need for "conventional" waste disposal, and lower greenhouse gas emissions as compared to virgin production. Recycling is a key component of modern waste reduction.
For example:
Making Aluminium cans from old ones uses one twelfth of the energy to make them from raw materials.
For glass bottles, 315kg of CO2 is saved per tonne of glass recycled after taking into account the transportation and processing
Making bags from recycled polythene takes one third the Sulphur Dioxide and half the Nitrous Oxide, than making them from scratch.
AIR QUALITY INDEX
The Air Quality Index (AQI) (also known as the Air Pollution Index (API) or Pollutant Standard Index (PSI)) is a number used by government agencies to characterize the quality of the air at a given location. As the AQI increases, an increasingly large percentage of the population is likely to experience increasingly severe adverse health effects. To compute the AQI requires an air pollutant concentration from a monitor or model.
The Air Quality Index (AQI) (also known as the Air Pollution Index (API) or Pollutant Standard Index (PSI)) is a number used by government agencies to characterize the quality of the air at a given location. As the AQI increases, an increasingly large percentage of the population is likely to experience increasingly severe adverse health effects. To compute the AQI requires an air pollutant concentration from a monitor or model. 