How to Calculate Your Carbon Footprint
by Chérmelle D. Edwards
Green. This color is undeniably a driving zeitgeist of our eco-driven times. It spews out of the mouths every social circle and class – environmental pundits, socialites, politically famous, the eco citizen. Since green is making its comeback, the movement behind it must be more than a color But, how can make living green more than a fad and a real way of life? You’ll find it comforting to know that the Zeitgeist of raising the green bar can be maintained by learning the bare necessities of aiding the movement: calculating the carbon footprint.
What is the carbon footprint?
Wikipedia defines carbon footprint as “a measure of the impact our activities have on our environment, particularly climate change. Our footprint comes from the greenhouse gases daily produced by burning fossil fuels for electricity, heating and transportation. This directly correlates to planets earths surface temperatures increasing.”
Know our individual carbon footprint makes us aware our of personal effect on the environment. Awareness then brings consciousness. Once we recognize the impacts of our actions we can empower ourselves to do decrease those activities in order to make our planet healthier.
There are a number of sites that assist in the calculation of your carbon footprint. Three recommended sites: BeGreenNow, SafeClimate.com and Nature.org.
It’s easy to navigate and has green link to calculate your carbon footprint on the right side of its screen. It measures your output in vehicles, electricity, travel and natural gas. With each tab it gives you the option to instantly find out two bits of information: how to reduce your output and where your money when you choose to offset your output. After imputing my data my results shocked me. I create 18.1 metric tons of CO2/yr a year; whereas the average American emits 9.44 tons of CO2/yr per year. I learned that my biggest footprint comes from traveling. In order to offset this output I plan on staying longer when I travel instead of making a lot of mini trips.
On its landing page it engages you right away. It provides a simple definition and then has three easy to follow steps to calculate footprints for households domestically or internationally.
http://www.nature.org/initiatives/climatechange/calculator/?src=f1
This site is an extensive resource on not only climate initiatives but issues involving nature as a whole. At nature.org you can calculate how many tons of CO2 and greenhouse gasses you output. There are color friendly tabs to indicate the categories being measured; home energy, driving and flying, food and diet and recycle and waste. This comprehensive calculator will take more time to go through than the others but provides a through reading of your activities.
Once you have your footprint you can begin to make small and significant changes to improve the planet. A few tips from the above site suggest the following:
One new habit that I’ve adopted is B.Y.O.B. By all means bring your our own bag – paper that is - when going to market. You’ll soon find with each small change that you won’t just be know to converse about the “in” thing but that you will be apart of the real change. Before you know it, you’ll find yourself the green thumb of your social circle.