All About Carbon Footprints

Carbon dioxide? Fossil fuels? Carbon footprint? Gas emissions? Okay, we know - these are a lot of heavy words. At Only, we believe that everyone should know what these words mean because understanding a concept is the first step towards solving a problem. What problem, you may ask? Oh, just the one that is threatening our Earth’s very survival. Get in girlfriend, it’s 2021 and we’re going to help save the planet.

Burn Baby Burn

To be able to understand carbon footprints, we have to do a little bit of work to understand fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are natural materials that have formed over the course of tens of thousands of years, from organic plant and animal matter. Some examples of fossil fuels are: natural gas, oil and coal. When these substances burn, a very high amount of CO2 is produced and released into the environment. Burning these fossil fuels is what creates a carbon footprint. And everyone has a carbon footprint.

Yes, you. And me, too.

The amount of CO2 that is burned to produce the products and maintain the services that we use every day results in our carbon footprint. These can be calculated on an individual level, household level, city level and even country level. Admittedly, doing research about how to reduce our carbon footprints can seem quite daunting, especially when you realize that nearly everything you do involves burning fossil fuels and creating CO2.  

This is by NO means an exhaustive list, but our individual carbon footprints vary and can depend on:

• Our electricity consumption: do you turn off the lights when you leave a room? How often is Netflix on in the background? How many devices are you charging every day?  
• Our modes of transportation: do you drive everywhere? Take the bus? Bike or walk?
• Our diets: did you know that it takes 15,944 litres of water to produce 1kg of beef in Canada?  How often do you get take-out to support a restaurant that uses 23,000 litres of water every single day?
• Where you buy things: do you buy local foods from farmers markets? Do you support local vendors and makers? Where is your pet food sourced from? Do you shop at big, box stores, malls, thrift stores? 
• The amount you travel: did you know that one Boeing 747 will burn 4 litres of fuel every second? That means that one 5 hour flight will burn 72,000 litres of fuel (psst, it sounds like a lot of fuel because it is a lot of fuel).

So, What?

All of those numbers sound big and scary, yet there are thousands of flights every day, millions of stores all over the world, and 7 billion people must use a lot of electricity every day. Facts. Another fact is that we only have one planet. All these things contribute considerably to the destruction of our earth and the environment. 

To put it into perspective about how wholly this impacts the world: in order to be able to create more land space (for houses, factories, stores...anything), we turn to deforestation. An increase in deforestation is creating more carbon emissions by powering bigger and more powerful machines, and by releasing these fossil fuels that were locked underground into the environment. When these emissions seep into our waterways and oceans, our natural bodies of water become increasingly acidic, destroying marine life. When these emissions reach our air, they cause alarming amounts of air pollution, smog, and can result in harmful health complications. Additionally, these CO2 emissions that are trapped beneath the O-Zone layer are unable to escape, resulting in higher temperatures all over the world. This leads to forest fires, dry earth, melting ice caps, rising water levels, the destruction of land, and damage to our ecosystems and species that need cooler temperatures to survive. 

Every Little Bit Counts, Seriously

All in all, your carbon footprint matters, for better or for worse. If every single person decided to change the way that they view and treat the environment, we could save (or immensely slow) the rate of destruction of our forests, our oceans, our air and our earth. 

It is our responsibility, as a proud Canadian company and a global citizen, to maintain social responsibility by playing our part in conserving our only environment. Yes, it’s true that our products are 100% organic, biodegradable and are FSC certified. We also completely offset the carbon emissions needed to get our products to your doorstep. Yup. Guilt-free, carbon-free, stress-free, natural convenience that puts the environment and you first. 

It’s Only what you deserve.