Reduce Your Carbon Footprint for Earth Day

Tips for Reducing Carbon Emissions for Earth Day

With today being Earth Day, now’s a good time as any to being reevaluating your energy use and taking better care of our dear planet. Carbon emissions are one of the most ubiquitous contributors to the Earth’s ill health. These emissions come from burning petroleum coal, natural gas, and other fossil fuels, so driving your car, traveling by plane, and even flipping a light switch create carbon emissions. These emissions contribute to the greenhouse effect, which is slowly warming our globe.

Let’s take a look at how you can reduce your carbon emissions to give our planet a boost this Earth Day.

Be Smart About Heating and Cooling

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, your heating and cooling system accounts for nearly half your energy bill, totaling about $1,000 a year for the average home. The harder your HVAC system has to work, the more fuel it burns, the more carbon dioxide it sends into our atmosphere. Taking even the smallest steps can reduce carbon emissions, including:

• Changing air filters
• Using a programmable thermostat
• Hiring a licensed contractor to check and maintain your system at least once a year

Seal It Up and Insulate

Along with maintaining your HVAC system, make sure you seal up your home. Air leaks and drafts force your system to work harder to heat or cool your home. Some simple steps to keep air in:

• Inspect your exterior walls and use caulk to seal up cracks and holes
• Install weather stripping around doors and windows
• Add insulation to your attic to block heat and cold

Properly sealing and insulating your home can keep your HVAC system a break and save you up to 20 percent in utility bills!

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

The three R’s remain the most popular and most stated means for keeping our planet healthy, and with good reason. By reducing, reusing, and recycling, you save energy and reduce greenhouse gases generated by manufacturing, extracting resources, and disposal.

Look into recycling programs within your community. Recyclable items include:

• Newspaper
• Cardboard
• Aluminum cans
• Glass jars and bottles
• Plastic bottles

Start a compost pile for your food and yard waste. This affects carbon emissions by reducing the amount of garbage you send to the landfill and gives you a ready source of fertilizer for your garden.

Caring For Our Earth at Bob Jenson

Because we serve customers from all over San Diego and the County you can imagine the old equipment, ducting and trash that comes back to our shop! We take recycling very serious here and while the easy way would be to throw everything away to go to a landfill, we separate wood, cardboard, metal, paper, and other recyclables and take them to the proper locations to be reused and recycled!

We also have to handle things like asbestos, old mercury thermostats, and different types of refrigerants that come inside the units we remove. We have a safe process to follow for each of these hazards. We wet and seal up any small pieces of asbestos in thick plastic. Anything over a certain amount an abatement company safely removes from the customers home. The installers and technicians bring back the old mercury thermostats so we can take them to a safe drop off center. And we carefully recover all old refrigerants into tanks here at our shop, never venting it into the atmosphere, which can hurt our ozone. These tanks, when full, are picked up and the refrigerant is taken away to be cleaned and recycled.

So with some simple steps around the house, you too can make this Earth Day a wonderful day for preserving the planet’s health and beauty for many years to come.