Airlines that offer transparent carbon offset programs are making a legitimate effort to be sustainable. It’s also a positive sign when airlines are experimenting with sustainable fuels. Don’t trust the stickers on the door that say the hotel or tour operator is environmentally certified. “Look at their corporate disclosure documents on their websites,” says Nneoma Njoku, general manager of Labrador U.S., a global corporate disclosure communications firm.

What we have now in the U.S. and most parts of the world is a lot of interest and ideas on how to address our carbon footprint to reduce global warming. While we cannot dictate to the rest of the world what we think needs to be done, we can certainly lead by example if we want to take those necessary steps. It seems to me that if we look where we should be in the future, we need to start coming together now and discuss the best ways to move forward. These are difficult issues potentially impacting all of our lives.

Scientific research is one of the more hidden users of disposable plastics, with the biomedical sciences a particularly high-volume offender. Plastic petri dishes, bottles of various shapes and sizes, several types of glove, a dizzying array of pipettes and pipette tips, a hoard of sample tubes and vials. They have all become an everyday part of scientific research. Most of us will never even see such equipment, but we all still rely on it. Without it, we wouldn’t have the knowledge, technologies, products and medicines we all use. It is vital to 21st-century lives, but it is also extremely polluting.

While agriculture in general – including the production of plant-based foods – is a source of pollution due to fertilizers, pesticides and other factors, the fact that 30 percent of all crops are ultimately fed to livestock means that meat takes a substantial proportion of the blame. Eutrophication of water bodies, for example, results from an excess of nutrients and things like animal excrement and leftover feed. This leads to overgrowth of algae and plants, using up all of the oxygen in the region and having serious impacts on other aquatic species

Blanket agricultural production doesn’t work across the world, and it’s important to consider local ecosystems when looking at how best to produce food with the lowest carbon footprint. A vegetarian typically has a smaller carbon footprint than a meat-eater but the plant-based diet isn’t practical everywhere, especially for those who live in dry or cold places that cannot support the growth of most vegetable crops.