Carbon Footprint Calculation

Carbon Footprint

The term carbon footprint is the amount of greenhouse gases and specifically carbon dioxide emitted by something (as a person’s activities or a product’s manufacture and transport) during a given period. In Today’s world where global warming is increasing quickly, we should know and decrease our damage on earth. Calculating our carbon footprint can help us to range the steps we can take to shrink it. Carbon Footprint Calculation is measured for each emission sector: housing, travel, food and stuff.

Calculation

In calculating housing footprint, there are some important cases that we have to consider: What kind of house we live in, how many bedrooms does our house have, how many people (aged 17 and over) live in our house, how we heat our home, whether our electricity is on a green tariff, if we regularly turn off our lights and appliances, how warm we keep our home in winter and home energy efficiency improvements which are installed in our house. We should pay attention to electricity and heating conservation, and water savings. We also need to check our house for insulation and double glazing.

What we eat, how much we spend on food from restaurants, canteens and takeaways, how much of the food we buy is wasted and thrown away and how often we purchase locally produced food are significant points on calculating food footprint. Buying more seasonal and locally produced organic food and eating less meal may decrease our harm.

Calculation of travel footprint contains what kind of vehicle we travel in most, how many hours a week we spend on the train or bus and how many flights we have made in the last year. We need to drive less because by biking or walking rather than driving, a person not only is going to save money on gas, but there will be burning less fuel and releasing fewer emissions into the atmosphere. Nevertheless, if walking is not an option, we should use public transportation.

In calculating stuff footprint; whether we bought any of new household items in the last 12 months, how much we spend on clothes and footwear; our pets and pet food; health, beauty and grooming products; phone, internet and TV contracts in a typical month, types of waste we recycle or compost are the most important determinants. We need to recycle our stuff because the most common way to reduce carbon footprint of humans is to recycle. For instance, we should use less paper, and replace paper towels and napkins with reusable cloths. We also should buy second hand products.

To sum up, due to carbon footprint calculation, we can easily learn how we affect global warming or greenhouse effect. All of us has a responsibility to reduce our individual carbon footprint and there are lots of ways to do so. We should encourage everyone to think about their lifestyle decisions and find opportunities to decrease their climate impact.