BLOG TEXT #4
WHAT IS THE CARBON HANDPRINT?
With the EcoFootprint Romania Project, the essence of our main goals is to promote a lifestyle that is more sustainable in order to build a better future for our children (and ourselves). We want our children to become more aware both of the ecological issues that unfortunately surround them as they are growing up and of potential resolutions, or tactics that can perhaps make the impact of these issues on their lives less vehement. Everything that we do (our products, our events and even the information we publish on our social media channels) is summarised by our wish for our children not to have to live in a world with so many incomprehensibly exponential issues, as these issues can be significantly reduced by just a few changes in people’s lifestyles that foreground sustainability.
One question, however, has the potential to arise when we set out such goals: how do we measure if our new lifestyles actually result in something more sustainable? In other words, is it possible to see if what we change around ourselves has an actual positive impact on the environment, as we planned? The answers to this question can be found in the concept of the carbon handprint.
The carbon handprint is most easily described as the opposite of the carbon footprint. Instead of measuring our negative impact on the environment and our contribution to carbon-related environmental problems, the carbon handprint showcases our positive impact and our positive contribution to a more sustainable society. To give an example, if you buy bottled water every single day, your carbon footprint grows, but if you start using a reusable bottle, then that increases your carbon handprint. Any environmentally positive decision that you make, any occasion where you put sustainability in front of your own comfort and most importantly, any realistic change that you create in your lifestyle can be measured within this concept.
In my opinion, this is where the real power of the carbon handprint lies. Our society today seems to be focusing on the negative when it comes to eco-awareness and environmental issues, illustrating more of the negative impact that companies and people have been doing historically (and continue to do) and less the possibility of any positive change. This can easily be overwhelming, resulting in a feeling of existential dread connected to ecology that scientists labelled as environmental anxiety. Due to this anxiety, many have chosen to accommodate their own comfort and not even think about sustainability, thinking that as climate change and other ecological problems are unstoppable, their contribution does not hold any weight – when in fact, it could. By shifting this paradigm and creating a space of positivity, we can encourage more people to participate in our journey towards sustainability, highlighting the ease with which one can have a positive impact on the environment and how significant our joint efforts can be.
However, it is vital that with all this, we still should not forget about our negative impact on the environment and about the fact that by simply living in modern society, we contribute to the destruction of the planet, which is why the carbon handprint should always be measured alongside the carbon footprint. With this in mind, it is essential to periodically measure both the foot- and the handprint to get the full picture and to find solutions in which we contribute more to our carbon handprint then to our footprint. For example, if you make the sustainable lifestyle change of cycling to work every day instead of driving, your carbon handprint will be significantly increased. But cycling will still contribute to your carbon footprint as well, as the creation of a bicycle requires materials, energy and resources. This negative impact, however, is clearly overrun by the positive impact of the change, as you would not be making any carbon emissions in your journey to work. Every sustainable lifestyle change that you make should be looked at through this lens: what are the positive and negative impacts of my choice, and which one of these impacts is larger? If the impacts are equal in size, your action can be labelled as carbon neutral, while if the positive outweighs the negative, you can think of it as carbon positive.1 The most important thing is trying to reduce the number of carbon negative choices that you make, but we all know that this is unavoidable in some cases. However, if you continue to be aware of when you make a carbon negative choice, you can also try reducing your carbon footprint as much as possible, even when the choice you make requires the footprint to be greater than the handprint.
Therefore, try to remember that eco-awareness and the conscious choice of becoming more sustainable is a game of positives and negatives. Whatever you do, you will have to negatively impact the environment in some way – however, if you focus on the positive and not the negative, your contribution to a sustainable world will be more meaningful and more recognizable. Small steps, big changes!
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