Firstly, I wanted to mention that executing the measurement of my carbon footprint has really opened my eyes to all the things I could be doing to reduce my, indirect or direct, emissions of carbon dioxide. I had never measured it before and, only by answering some questions, I started reflecting on how I live my daily life and rethinking many of my family’s traditional activities.

I live in Brazil and, after doing some research, I found out that it is estimated that a Brazilian person has its carbon footprint in quantities of 7,850 kgs of CO2 per year. Also, São Paulo, the city where I live, is the 63rd city in a ranking that measures the biggest emissions of CO2 in the world. My personal footprint is calculated in quantities of 6.503 kgs of CO2 per year (which you can see in the screenshot below) and can easily relate to many non-sustainable activities that are practiced in Brazil today. Even though Brazil's carbon footprint (and, also, my own carbon footprint) is a lot smaller than other countries', as the United States (27.380 kgs of CO2 per year per habitant) or Canada (21.730 kgs of CO2 per year per habitant), it is not ideal and should be reduced. 

After some more research, I found out that richer countries produce more carbon dioxide. The United States and Canada are some very rich countries if compared to Brazil, and so their carbon footprint is high as the number of their emissions per year per person (cited previously) is actually the amount of emissions of the whole country divided by habitants. But, what happens is that Brazil is a really populous country, with a population of more than 210 million people, to be exact, so that means that even though the country’s levels of emissions per person can be considered small If compared to others’, Brazil's emissions of CO2 are huge. This happens as there are very few politics with visible results on reducing bad gases’ emissions in Brazil, high consumption of food with high CO2 emission levels, many automobiles on the big cities’ streets, and in consequence of many other causes. My own carbon footprint reflects the little effort of our country in really working to reduce its carbon footprint and in educating people about it.

My family has never done great things to help the environment, but, as I grew up, I started learning about climate change and about many other human actions that have a bad effect on nature at school. The results of my carbon footprint test explicit the long ride I’ve got until I effectively start taking care of our planet the best way I can, as changing the habits of a family can take a really long time, but I am determined to change them! While having a conversation with my father about the result of my carbon footprint test yesterday, I could already see my ideas taking place in reality, as he also showed an enormous dissatisfaction with many non-ecological things that we do at home. 

Although I’m really motivated in having more ecological friendly habits, I’m still a little bit confused about which are the most effective ways to practice them, but I’m sure the decarbonize project will help me with it! I’m really, really thankful for having the opportunity of participating in this project.

Sources: http://www.iniciativaverde.org.br/calculadora/index.php, https://wribrasil.org.br/pt/blog/2019/07/voce-sabe-pegada-de-carbono-da-sua-cidade-veja-ranking-global, and https://depts.washington.edu/i2sea/iscfc/fpcalc.php 

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