Acacia Erhardt is a Carbon Finance Associate at CarbonCure, a company that reduces carbon in buildings by injecting CO2 into concrete.

Join Acacia in incorporating sustainability into your home with everyday actions.

Track these actions in Decarbon!

1. Fix something around your house, whether it be a broken coffee mug or those old pants with a hole in them
2. Try being vegetarian for a week this month
3. Hang dry some of your clothes each week

More challenges from Acacia below! If you complete 3 of these challenges, message Acacia at aerhardt@carboncure.com to receive a token of climate gratitude from the CarbonCure team.

Discuss and ask questions in r/decarbon.

My name is Acacia, and I work for CarbonCure Technologies.

CarbonCure is on a mission to reduce and remove 500 Mt CO2 annually by 2030. By leveraging the concrete industry’s 100,000 concrete plants to store massive amounts of CO2, the goal is to make a dent in 7% of global emissions.

I am lucky to use most of my waking life to address climate change. That said, technology is just one facet of the solution to our climate problem. Technology alone can’t fix us. There is political action, and cultural changes that we can leverage to meet the moment.

I realize most people don’t work in climate science or climate tech, but the career you have or the place you live doesn’t have to stop you from joining the fight. We can all have a cultural impact on our community regardless of what we do from 9 to 5.

With that in mind, I wanted to share a bit about my thinking around sustainability at home. I hope that some of my everyday actions can inspire you to be mindful of the endpoints of goods that come in and out of your home.

I want to share some values my core community, my own grandmother, taught me years before I began working in climate. All of these are centered on being mindful; caring for what you bring into your home and prolonging their life.

Stop throwing things away

If there is one thing that I want to impress upon you, it’s that everything deserves a second chance. Broken items and ripped clothes are repaired and patched. I am not technically inclined and am certainly not going to garner any accolades for my sewing, but why not try?

I have taken an interest in my clothes that I did not possess until my first dress shirt turned yellow in the armpits (vinegar and hydrogen peroxide can remove that). I got the idea that I was smart enough to change the headlights in my car, and I was! My landlord wouldn’t re-caulk the bathtub, so I did. And you can too. Do it because you can.

I challenge you to:

1. Fix something around your house, whether it be a broken coffee mug or those old pants with a hole in them
2. Use the food that is in your fridge right now before it goes bad

We have food at home

While Grandma’s influence was overwhelmingly positive, I did have to reexamine my relationship with meat. Growing up, meat was served at every meal; as an adult – I decided to adopt a *mostly* vegetarian diet. When I learned that food was about 20% of the average American’s carbon footprint, the majority of that being meat, I realized I could make a change to my habits and dramatically reduce my carbon footprint.

It took me a while to build an imagination large enough to figure out how to ensure every meal didn’t rely on an animal protein, but once I did, I entered a new world; one that’s better for me and the planet.

I challenge you to:

1. Try being vegetarian for a week a month. Hate cheese? One-up me and go vegan!
2. Save old containers and reuse them – those old pasta jars make great cups and those old yogurt containers are great for giving leftover mashed potatoes to friends (as my grandma does every Thanksgiving)!
3. Eat at home for the next 2 weeks

Hang dry your clothes – they will last longer!

I have lived in Texas, NYC, and San Francisco, and the laundry situations have been as diverse as you can imagine. Whether you have in-unit laundry (please, don’t brag) or have to schlep to the laundromat, laundry is a chore, and I know that suggesting changes that will make the chore more complicated is bold. However, I am a firm believer in hang drying clothes whenever possible.

I’m not a purist, so the sheets go in the dryer. But every week, just barely out of view of my Zoom camera, I have loads of laundry drying next to me. The dryer is remarkable technology, so it makes sense to only use it sparingly. Skipping the dryer will reduce the carbon intensity of your laundry by about 85%.

Not only does it dramatically reduce your electricity usage – it’s better for your clothes. The drier literally wears down your clothes and eventually creates pilling and holes.

Advanced: Laundry detergent is diluted with water to increase the consumers’ sense of value with a bigger container. Further, the chemicals that are put in detergent to make the soap water-soluble have been linked to cancer. If you have an interest in an alternative to your average grocery store detergent, there is a library of knowledge on how to make your own laundry detergent. If you are not the DIY kind of girl, it only takes a few google searches to determine the product that is right for your needs.

I challenge you to:

1. Hang dry some of your clothes each week; maybe start with your workout clothes, then add in your underwear ;)
2. Try an environmentally friendly detergent (I like Dirty Labs) or make your own!

Your individual consumption changes will not make the difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees of global warming, and that’s not the point. The goal is to make a change, then share widely and inspire others to take action. For me, the feeling of taking charge of my own household sustainability has made me more optimistic and action-oriented, and I hope after reading this you feel motivated as well.  From my grandma, to me, to you.

If you complete 3 of these challenges, please message me and I will send you a token of climate gratitude from the CarbonCure team.

Get connected

• Visit CarbonCure’s website
• Follow CarbonCure on Twitter and LinkedIn
• Visit Decarbon’s website

Did we miss something? Want to collab? Email us at hi@decarbonapp.com