Calculating your Carbon Footprint
In the previous post ‘Carbon Footprint – What is a carbon footprint?’ we looked at what a carbon footprint was and what contributes to a person’s carbon footprint. The next step therefore seems sensible to look at how an individual can calculate their carbon footprint.
As mentioned in ‘Carbon Footprint – What is it?’ an individual’s carbon footprint can be split into two parts, those being primary and secondary additions to a person’s carbon footprint.
Calculating the first step uses a degree of approximation and guesswork, but recently has been made easier with a number of tools that are now available online. On the energy saving trust website, there is a good tool for measuring the carbon footprint for your home as an individual or as a household. Also, JP Morgan has a good carbon calculator to work out the CO2 emissions for your travel, both privately and publicly. With both of these tools you have to enter information about yourself, and the carbon calculator does the rest. Both these tools provide you with great information about your carbon footprint and allow you to see what impact you are having on climate change. Knowing the actual figures sometimes is shocking and really allows you to assess your personal impact on climate change and look at ways of reducing it.
Calculating the amount of greenhouse gases released from secondary sources that contribute to your carbon footprint is a lot more difficult however. A huge amount of data must be gathered to get even close to being accurate in measuring this. Everything you buy, every electrical product, peice of clothing and grocery item will have its own unique carbon footprint. Working this out means information needs to be gathered on the amount of CO2, if any, that is released at every stage of a products creation and every stage in the supply chain that delivers that product to you; all these added up will give you the carbon footprint for that one item alone. And given the thousands of products we buy and consume each year, the level and difficulty of the task at hand to work out your secondary footprint is visible.
Given that the secondary footprint makes up the majority of an individual’s carbon footprint as highlighted in the graphic in ‘Carbon Footprint – What is it?’, it is important to truly know this figure so you can act on your carbon footprint and reduce your carbon emissions more effectively.
Tags: calculating carbon footprint, carbon calculator, Carbon Emissions, carbon footprint, reduce carbon emissions, what is my carbon footprint