Calculate your carbon footprint
We’ve all got one – a carbon footprint – our own personal measure of how much carbon dioxide we create, an individual invisible record of how much we contribute to climate change.
Our personal emissions of greenhouse gases are changing the climate – every time we burn coal, oil or gas for energy. More than 40 per cent of CO2 emissions in the UK come directly from what we do as individuals – heating our homes, turning on the lights, driving our cars.
But knowledge is power – when we know how and why we create the carbon dioxide we do, then we also throw a little light on how we might create less of the stuff.
And the UK government is making it easy with a simple to use carbon footprint online measuring thing. You can do it for yourself or you can do it for the household in which you live. It’s easy, takes just a few minutes.
Go Generous here by clicking where it says ‘Calculate your carbon footprint’.
Join the fray by signing in.
London, GB , 07 Jul 2008
Mine’s improved a lot since the last time I checked. We now live in the UK rather than the US, don’t own a car, and have moved from a detached house to a flat. But it’s still far too high!
One problem I had filling this out was that all our utility bills are handled by the landlords, we don’t have outdoor space to dry things (but we rack dry them where we can) and I don’t know much about the structure of the building. We’re hoping to move to our own place soon so it’s a helpful reminder of the things to look out for, and hopefully we’ll be able to bring that footprint down a lot further…
London, GB , 07 Jul 2008
As an addendum: there are of course quite a few measures missing from this, many of which Generous has looked at, like where food comes from, shopping, recycling, etc.
London, GB , 07 Jul 2008
Just to give some context here… Operation Noah is encouraging supporters to campaign government to set emission caps at 1 tonne per person per year by 2030 to reduce emissions to the level that is needed in order to avoid catastrophic climate change.
Some explanation of why the “1 tonne per person” goal is provided here: Operation Noah’s goals
GB , 10 Jul 2008
mine came to 7.66 tonnes per year, is there anyway of finding out if this is average/above/below?
London, GB , 10 Jul 2008
Oh the shame! mine came in at 12.12 tonnes – above national average. I like to think I make sustainable choices but its obviously not nearly enough. In my defence, my household was 3.17, appliances 0.91, and travel was 8.04. So it’s the long haul flights that are the main culprit here. And I do offset those.
Must try harder.
Clairegillies – on the site you can compare your footprint with the national average on the final screen.
London, GB , 10 Jul 2008
clairegillies – according to the document klstewart linked to from Operation Noah, the national average is about 9.5 tonnes. I’ve not seen a breakdown of that, so I’m not sure how they’ve calculated it. Hopefully they’ll publish more of the reasoning soon…
17 Aug 2008
I’ve just calculated my personal carbon footprint, which came out at 4.7 tonnes per year against the average of 4.48. Oh dear, and I thought I was doing so well. I thought it may have been the old car but starngely enough my transport carbon footprint measured 1.66 compared to the average 1.80. Home 2.31 (2) and Appliances .73 (.68). I’m not one for buying new and therefore more energy efficient products unless an old one breaks. All our appliances are old and therefore score high but I’m not going to throw them or pass them onto another until they die.