Your Carbon Footprint: Calculating, Reducing and Offsetting Your Impact

Just want to give a thumbs up to this entry. Obviously we can't deny the problem of climate change and the value of understanding carbon footprints for individuals, businesses, events, and products. Zerofootprint (http://www.zerofootprint.net) provides another great tool for calculating one's carbon footprint and planning ways to reduce it (full disclosure, I work at Zerofootprint).

Nice post and a good summary. At Carbon Planet (I am founder and Executive Director) we have a global team of engineers (mostly chemical engineers, but others too) and scientists who perform carbon emissions audits that comply with ISO14064-1 (and the WCSBD's GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard). It's not always necessary to perform full LCA for companies that don't manufacture products. We've found that many companies simply can not afford the extra expense of a full LCA and it really limits the number of companies able to address their carbon footprint to demand that they all conduct LCA.

This is essentially a mid-way point between the options you cite in your story. We only tend to perform LCA on specific products and services, and use the above mentioned standards for assessing the impact of the general administration of a business.

For consumer retail customers we simply take the published national emissions figures and divide by the total population to get an average emissions per person figure. In Australia that's around 28 tonnes per person. In the USA around 24 tonnes. In the UK around 11 tonnes. In China and India around 1 tonne.

For calculation of flight emissions we have a very detailed FEC that incorporates the so-called "radiative forcing index" which accounts for the fact that the emissions do more harm when released at high altitude. and we distinguish between economy class, business class and first class travel. This is all explained in some detail in a PDF document we produced at http://www.carbonplanet.com/downloads/ghg_emission_factors_for_flights.pdf

See also http://flights.carbonplanet.com for more on this.

Cheers

Dave Sag
http://www.carbonplanet.com

For those who enjoy shopping online but worry about the resulting contributions to global warming, here's a new way to reduce your carbon footprint: www.EarthMoment.com. It's a portal to other online shopping sites, and they make a donation to carbon offsets for every purchase you make. (In the interest of full disclosure, I'm an editor at Mother Earth News magazine, and EarthMoment is brought to you by our publisher.)

This is a great post, simple and straightforward. This entry brings that good old buzzword a whole new meaning and dimension.

All the food we eat and the products we buy produce a carbon footprint. The distribution of these materials from manufacturing to distribution to home is heavily rooted in the trucking industry. We just launched their LoneStar truck which is a significant step towards a more fuel efficient future in the trucking industry and helps to lessen this footprint.

Learn more about the LoneStar on www.InternationalTrucks.com

The International Trucks team

This is an excellent summary of how each of us impacts the environment with the energy we consume daily. Whether it is our televisions, cars or the food we eat, each action and gadget we use leaves a mark which adds greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The solution is not solely how we use energy, but changing the fuel we use into something that is clean and sustainable. Hydrogen, when utilized in its purest form and produced from renewable sources, is clean with water as the only by-product.

As a representative of The National Hydrogen Association, I have witnessed how organizations, government agencies and scientists are working together to create new the gadgets and cars that takes advantage hydrogen’s versatility as a fuel. Recently, two leading fuel cell manufacturing companies, Ballard Power Systems and Plug Power, released a joint report that confirms fuel cells can improve the environment by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The report is readily available at Plug Power’s website at http://www.plugpower.com/news/documents/GHG%20FINAL.pdf.

The automotive sector continues to captivate our interest as it seems this is the best way to reduce our carbon footprint. This story emphasizes we must consider our daily activities as well. The versatility of hydrogen as an alternative fuel allows it to be used in a variety of applications such as in specialty transportation to power forklifts and as emergency power stations for cell phone towers. Millennium Cell, a fuel cell manufacturer, is preparing to an emergency power for commercial use: http://gadgetgreeninspector.blogspot.com/2008/01/hydropak.html. Additionally, Motorola is preparing to rollout the first fuel cell powered cell phone: http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/15/angstrom-power-touts-hydrogen-fuel-cells-for-cellphones/

Here's another good way to calculate your carbon footprint, save the planet and offset your carbon emissions...

co2balance can help you ethically minimise your carbon emissions and offset the unavoidable CO2 residue.

Great post! There are two very practical ways to reduce your carbon footprint. For a conscious gardening solution, Sunlawn has developed the innovative Push Reel Mower. It's easy to use, environmentally safe, reliable, requires no gasoline and no noise. Other lawn mowers emit dangerous fumes and gasoline in the air, Sunlawn products do not! www.sunlawn.com

Also, the worlds largest brand of 100% compostable waste bags is BioBag. Kitchen bags, dog/cat waste bags, lawn and leaf bags... BioBag has it all! Using compostable bags eliminates your waste in the ever increasing landfills! www.biobagusa.com

These are just 2 easy ways to reduce your carbon footprint!