Welcome to Climate Conscious Consumer! We’ve built this site to help the average person get educated about carbon emission reduction and find ways to introduce this value into their lives in a meaningful way.
To be honest, the more we learn about climate change and its effects, the scarier and more depressing things often feel. Thinking about how we can make changes in our own lives to reduce our burden on the climate and help reduce emissions can be both empowering and demoralizing at the same time. There is a lot to be done on all levels to address climate change and try to reduce and reverse the harmful direction we are headed with global warming.
The Problem We Have as The Average Consumer:
It’s not easy to do the research and understand where our biggest impact as consumers lie, nor is it easy to know when for-profit companies are greenwashing their marketing with claims that don’t actually help the environment. In fact, a lot of what we believe has been found to be false. For example, many people believe the plastics they throw in their blue bin are 100% recyclable when in reality only 8% are able to be recycled (mostly the 1s and 2s in the recycle symbols are the only plastics that can be recycled). The rest usually end up in a landfill and never decompose in our lifetime while seeping toxic chemicals into our soil.
It can be an emotional rollercoaster to learn the good, the bad, and the ugly of reality but change doesn’t happen if you don’t take action.
We know we can have an impact with a collective of enough people acting individually but we also need to know where our efforts are most effective.
Our Goal is to Help Consumers Find Ways to Reduce Their Carbon Emissions and Reduce Their Impact on the Environment:
We will provide the TLDR of educational materials with links to their direct sources so we can all collectively learn about climate harm reduction even if you don’t want to dive deep into the data.
We know that making changes to our habits can be difficult to sustain. But, when you have a shift in values and knowledge, alignment with your values makes habit change into a lifestyle. Through the course of the last few years, we experimented with our own behavior changes in areas that help reduce our personal carbon footprint. It wasn’t easy, but the key is to remember that reduction is better than trying to cut something out completely, failing, then reverting back.
The good news is, we have most of the technology we need to shift our energy sources and reduce our carbon emissions now. Several countries are close to net zero carbon emissions. Bhutan is carbon neutral if not carbon negative after deliberate initiatives toward a GNH (gross national happiness) focus says Tshering Tobgay in this TED talk. These are a testament to solutions that work. There are thousands of companies that are working on innovative solutions every day to help fight our climate crisis and many more coming to fruition with clean tech funding.
We may not see all of this in the mainstream media, but on this site, we’ll share the positive movements happening here and around the world.
The climate crisis is all of our responsibilities to address: That is, it’s our government policies, our international collaboration and commitment, our companies, and our consumers. Consumers are the driving force of choice. You vote with your dollars as you show companies by means of what you buy, what you value. Money speaks volumes. Companies are driven by their profits. If money shifts to companies that provide true climate conscious solutions, other companies will follow.
Our goal at the Climate Conscious Consumer website is to provide solutions by providing:
- The knowledge that cuts through greenwashing so you can understand your areas of greatest impact.
- Recommendations to habits that can help cut consumption.
- Recommendations for services, companies, and organizations that help reduce energy consumption.
- Recommendations to consumer alternatives that reduce burdens to the environment.
Let’s do our best together to fight climate change for the next generation.
– The Climate Conscious Consumer Team