What is Carbon Footprint?

What does the term ‘carbon footprint’ actually mean? It has been around for a while now, especially in connection to global warming and climate change, but do you know what it is all about and what it actually means?

Do you know what your carbon footprint means and do you know how to work out your own carbon footprint?

Causing an Impact

The term ‘carbon footprint’ is a larger metaphor for the impact that you directly have on the environment. How you travel, move about in cities, what you use to power your electronics, how much fuel you burn in your car, even what you eat will affect your carbon footprint.

Your carbon footprint is related to the man made impact on our earth. It is essentially the amount of greenhouse gases—primarily carbon dioxide—released into the atmosphere by a particular human activity, such as using cars, powering your home, and various other activities.

How do I calculate my carbon footprint?

A lot of factors add up to make your carbon footprint. A good way to get an idea is to look at your personal use of all of these key factors, including: what you eat, how much energy you use in your home, what is your main transport, how well do you recycle, and how often you fly.

You can quickly and easily get an idea if you have a large or small carbon footprint on our calculator.

Toe-Prints?

There are also many offshoots that are missed from a carbon footprint calculator. These not only stem from the way you travel or your home energy, but also from the goods and services you buy and choose to use.

For example, if you are driving an electric car, or turning off the lights as much as you can, but then hire a plumber who drives in an old car that guzzles petrol, you could consider that as a part of your greenhouse emissions. Even though you weren’t the one driving the car, they still drove to your house to help you.

While it is not your responsibility, it is something to consider!

Extra Thoughts

Here are a few interesting facts to consider:

-        Food production generates about 8 tons of emissions per household, or about 17% of the total. Worldwide, new reports suggest that livestock agriculture produces around a half of all man-made emissions. Changing the foods you consume can have a huge impact on your carbon footprint.

-        Air travel accounts for about 2.5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions — a far smaller share than emissions from passenger cars or power plants. While flying may be more expensive than driving, it can be far better for the environment. This also stems to some forms of public transport, especially when a lot of people are using one vehicle to travel instead of 50!

It’s Time to Join the Movement

No one expects the world to change in an instant. We have all become accustomed to convenience and lifestyle. But with world experts telling us this is an emergency, anything you can do to lessen your carbon footprint will be something.  The time is now to join the movement. As Howard Zinn has famously said: “small acts when multiplied by millions of people can transform the world”.

While we can all make a conscious effort to start reducing our carbon footprint, there is another way we can start a movement. We can offset our carbon footprint by protecting the trees that are already working hard to provide us with oxygen.

Trees reduce our CO2 emissions as they quite literally, eat carbon. Trees breathe in carbon and pump out oxygen.

Now is the time to start thinking about living footprint free and offsetting your carbon footprint. We need to act now, tomorrow is too late.