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Take a break on zero emission day 2024

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 Do you know how much you contribute to the daily emissions in your city? How much does the city you live in contribute within your country? How much does your country contribute to the emissions on our planet? Do you know its impact?

Do you know why we have a zero emission day?

pollution-clouds-industrial-covering-forest
Photo by Pixabay via Pexels

Let us start by getting our acronyms right, shall we? You may have heard the term GHG emissions, wondering what that means.

GHG stands for Green House Gas. These gases are part of the cause of the rising temperature on Earth. What is interesting about them  is that they absorb infrared radiation resulting in the greenhouse effect. Within the greenhouse gases you find carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, water vapour.

The vast majority of carbon dioxide emissions by humans come from the burning of fossil fuels.

Key sectors to consider for GHG

  • Fuel Exploitation
  • Power Industry
  • Transport
  • Waste
  • Agriculture
  • Buildings
  • Industry combustion and processes

Top GHG emissions’ contributors

It is important to know that there are many facets to looking at the data. As an example, one country can look as a high emitter, however if you factor in population and/or main source of the GHG emissions then you might discover that is a less offender compared to the other top GHG country emitter.

Here are the top 12 countries (2022 was the last pull of this data)

  1. China
  2. United States
  3. India
  4. EU27
  5. Russia
  6. Brazil
  7. Indonesia
  8. Japan
  9. Iran
  10. Mexico
  11. Germany
  12. Canada

top-emitters-graph

 

Follow the link and take a look at this interactive graph, by The World Resource Institute (wri.org). It showcases the sectors within the top 10 emitters that contributes over two-thirds of Global emissions

So, what about Zero Emission day?

21 September is Zero Emissions Day, or ZeDay, created by Canadian artist and environmental enthusiast Ken Wallace in 2008. This day calls us to build a sustainable future by reducing GHG emissions.

Over a 100 countries are now participating, and organisations, such as the United Nations (UN), are supporting the initiative.

It is a good reminder about the impact of climate change, and for us to contribute to the reduction of the emissions, as a collective, as a community.

What can I do?

You might be questioning this, and thinking that nothing you can do can change the course. 

However, by doing nothing... guess what will happen... NOTHING.

I firmly believe that “is the little things that matters”. If we all take accountability and responsibility, engaging to do one action towards an initiative such as this, then we can achieve good results. We need to share the responsibilities with the government and the companies, while we also hold them accountable, and do our fair share. 

Therefore here are a few things that you could do on this day:

  1. Reduce the use of non-essential electrical appliances. How about you spend the majority of your day outside and refrain yourself from being in the house turning the TV, and charging that tablet, and leaving all the lights in the living room on?
  2. Perhaps you start building the new habit of leveraging other ways of transportation, reducing the monthly consumption of your vehicle. You can start small and see how that goes?
  3. How about a no-car day, at your household or workplace? Maybe you get that bike, or longboard, take the train or take that long walk that you wanted to do but you think that you never have time?
  4.  Join the conversation at your workplace, showcasing the value of hybrid work style for the type of jobs that makes sense. That balance between office and working-from-home time is beneficial to the company and the employee, and contributes to reducing the amount of vehicles in our cities and roads.
  5. How about carbon offset programs?
  6. Lead by example. Don’t be like those that use social media and hit like a good initiative, but do nothing more. Try to get involved, or do an action yourself that showcases a contribution to an initiative such as this.
  7. How about you influence policy? There are many ways to do that:
    1. Getting involved
    2. Supporting companies that have green initiatives and/or offset programs. Stop using those companies that don’t.
    3. Support governments that are taking positive actions that are given good results towards a sustainable future.  
  8. Your weekly diet. Consider versatile your food consumption. This is not to eliminate your red meat consumption, but to reduce it by finding alternatives with other types of meat, and learning the value of greens as part of a balanced diet.  
  9. Control the urge of buying unnecessary products (or services) that increase production and transportation. For example:
    1. Do you really need to change your mobile phone every year?
    2. Do you really need to be on the internet all day? How about a break to have a healthy sleep, or a good weekend outside (walking, not driving, ha!) reducing your internet and electricity consumption. You may find that even liberating and good for your physical and mental health


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