Image courtesy of Jimmy & Susan Wedel
You can do simple things to reduce your impact on the environment like turning off the lights or TV when you’re not in the room, carpooling to school or work with neighbors, walking or riding a bike whenever you can, buying locally produced food, and recycling as much as possible.
Every little bit you can do to reduce your use of energy and water will make your carbon footprint smaller.
Figuring Out Our Carbon Footprint.
Like any business or home, Anvil depends on energy to heat and cool our facilities, power our operations and fuel our transportation activities.
Understanding not only how much energy we use but how we use it was a critical first step to being able to reduce the amount we consume, and by extension, begin to reduce our carbon footprint.
What exactly is a carbon footprint? The term is shorthand for the amount of carbon emitted during any given activity, or as in Anvil’s case, all the activities that go into manufacturing, selling and distributing our products.
Product Comparison: Breakdown of GHG Emissions by Activity
In order to calculate our carbon footprint, we enlisted Camco, a leading climate change and sustainable development company specializing in carbon risk management, to conduct what’s called an organizational greenhouse gas emissions assessment. This is a full accounting of how and where energy is used in Anvil operations.
Source: EPA’s Climate Change
The Greenhouse Effect
Some of the infared radiation passes through the atmosphere but most is absorbed and re-emitted in all directions by greenhouse gas molecules and clouds. The effect of this is to warm the Earth’s surface and the lower atmosphere.
What All This Means.
In simple words, Carbon dioxide (or CO2) is one of six natural “greenhouse gases” found in the earth’s atmosphere.
These greenhouse gases allow sunlight to enter the atmosphere freely, and also act as a “trap” for heat within the atmosphere. They are critical for maintaining the Earth’s surface at a constant temperature. In order to do that, it’s important that amount of heat the gases “trap” remains stable. Too many greenhouse gas emissions can mean too much heat trapped on the earth. In turn, the more trapped heat in the atmosphere, the higher Earth’s temperature will rise, which causes changes in climate.
In order to accurately calculate the impact any given activity has on the environment, one must add all the greenhouse gases emitted during the course of that activity. Now, each of the six gases has a different chemical composition, which means simply adding up individual emissions would be impossible. (Imagine trying to calculate the exact weight of 6 ounces of sugar plus 4 grams of milk without taking into account that one is a dry ingredient and the other is a liquid and without converting the measurements themselves.)
So to make the calculation accurate, all of the gases are converted to carbon dioxide equivalents, then added to come up with one big number— the carbon footprint! This footprint is measured in metric tons, also known as “tonnes.” One metric ton is equivalent to 1,000 kilograms, or approximately 2,205 pounds.
Did you know that about 60% of a shirt’s carbon footprint comes from a lifetime of washing and wearing it?
You can reduce your shirts impact on the environment by using cold water in the washing machine- by just switching to cold water washing once a week, you can shrink your carbon footprint by 275 pounds each year! By skipping the dryer and letting your shirt air dry once a week, you’ll shed your footprint by another 200 pounds a year.
Reuse and Recycle Your Tee!
Instead of tossing your shirt, where it will end up in a landfill, here are a few ideas that you can do to give life to your tee!
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Donate it to a thrift store or a clothing collecting box. Giving away your old clothes to someone less fortunate will not only make you feel good, it will make the earth happy because it’s one less item in the trash pile
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Have a clothing swap party with your friends, this way someone can give the shirt a whole new life in their wardrobe
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Be a neat freak. Turn your old tees into rags for cleaning
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Get creative. There are tons of ways you can redesign your shirt into pillows, bags, scarves, quilts-even art!