# Help me increase my carbon footprint **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 28, 2008, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-increase-my-carbon-footprint/454602 "2008-06-28T22:36:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2008, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-increase-my-carbon-footprint/454602/41 "2008-06-30T18:50:30Z")
Become a staunch advocate of recycling. Aluminum cans are a good start. Whenever you have a large collection of eight cans or so, drive your SUV down to the home improvement store and buy a fancy container to carry them in. Go home, load the cans in the new container and then search on-line for a place that can take the cans from you. Pick a place that is far away and completely unfamiliar so that you can get some exploring in at the same time. Load up the cans in the fancy container into your SUV and drive around looking for the redemption spot for a couple of hours. Eventually give up and throw everything out in a ditch beside the road somewhere while getting disgusted over what it takes to be a good environmental steward these days. Try again the next week with a very similar outcome. ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2008, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-increase-my-carbon-footprint/454602/42 "2008-06-30T19:55:16Z")
Damn, **walrus** , that’s positively nefarious. ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2008, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-increase-my-carbon-footprint/454602/43 "2008-07-05T19:31:15Z")
Of course you could always become a rockstar and a well known voice standing up for the defence of the environment internationally and then send your own private Jumbo Jet halfway round the world to pick up your favourite hat that you forgot to bring with you. That should do it. ---
**Author:** ![Kuboydal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecb155/32.png) [@Kuboydal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kuboydal)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2008, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-increase-my-carbon-footprint/454602/44 "2008-07-05T19:42:36Z")
Just don’t forget to ‘offset’ your carbon by giving a bali goat farmer $20 to assuage your pseudoguilt. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2008, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-increase-my-carbon-footprint/454602/45 "2008-07-05T21:49:04Z")
Use your gas-powered lawn equipment as much as possible, on the hottest days at the hottest time of the day. Your lawn will look fantastic and you’ll have a nice cloud of smog over top of your property too. ---
**Author:** ![MacTech](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@MacTech](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacTech)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2008, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-increase-my-carbon-footprint/454602/46 "2008-07-05T22:05:40Z")
[QUOTE=ZipperJJ] Use your gas-powered lawn equipment as much as possible, on the hottest days at the hottest time of the day. Your lawn will look fantastic and you’ll have a nice cloud of smog over top of your property too. [/QUOTE] for even more effectiveness, make sure your weedwhackers/trimmers and such are powered by noisy, oil-burning two-stroke engines, and if you _really_ want to be serious about increasing your footprint, use an old DIESEL garden tractor that rarely gets tuned up, in fact, go for broke, de-tune it! ---
**Author:** ![Omegaman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/e480ec/32.png) [@Omegaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omegaman)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2008, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-increase-my-carbon-footprint/454602/47 "2008-07-05T22:15:57Z")
After you have expired, you could have one of your friends render your carcass into a fat stew and be basted onto a pile of tires and have a funeral pyre of monumental proportions. Or just do what everybody else does and don’t recycle, be wasteful, etc. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Arky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/87869e/32.png) [@An\_Arky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Arky)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2008, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-increase-my-carbon-footprint/454602/48 "2008-07-05T22:29:23Z")
Start a bunch of forest fires…not only will you put a lot of carbon into the atmosphere, you’ll attain more notoriety than from posting an endless string of banalities on a message board. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2008, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-increase-my-carbon-footprint/454602/49 "2008-07-05T22:54:31Z")
[QUOTE=An Arky] Start a bunch of forest fires…not only will you put a lot of carbon into the atmosphere, you’ll attain more notoriety than from posting an endless string of banalities on a message board. [/QUOTE] While you’re at it, blow up some petroleum refineries and pipelines. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Arky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/87869e/32.png) [@An\_Arky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Arky)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2008, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-increase-my-carbon-footprint/454602/50 "2008-07-05T23:34:10Z")
Yeah, that would be like a video game, only cooler! Wait, if you take out refining capacity, wouldn’t that decrease the carbon footprint? Ah, who cares? Explosions kick ass! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-increase-my-carbon-footprint/454602.md?page=2)