Your Carbon Footprint: Calculating, Reducing and Offsetting Your Impact

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carbon footprint airplane flight photo
Reducing your carbon footprint
Increasing the efficiency of our energy use, reducing our energy use and changing a few habits (like eating less meat, eating more local food, not traveling by airplane as much) are some of the quick, easy ways to cut back on the size our individual carbon footprints.

Where do carbon offsets fit in carbon footprints?
After increasing efficiency and reducing use, carbon offsets are also an increasingly popular (and increasingly controversial) way to help mitigate our carbon footprints -- see TreeHugger's How to Green Your Carbon Offsets guide for more on that. But the point remains: there are many, many ways to reduce and even eliminate your carbon footprint; most every article you'll read on TreeHugger will be related to carbon footprints and emissions, though some more directly than others.

carbon footprint reduce your co2 photo
Photo credit: glamhag

Moving forward, we expect to see more and more information about the carbon footprints of the things we encounter and use every day; carbon labeling for produce is catching on the UK, and we've seen carbon footprint measurements for everything from cheeseburgers to Christmas, and sushi to Shaq. Want more? Type 'carbon footprint' into our search engine, above, on the right, and go nuts.

Calculating your carbon footprint
Ready to find out what your carbon footprint is? There are a handful of calculators out there; try The Nature Conservancy's Carbon Footprint Calculator and the calculator at ClimateCrisis.net (yep, the site for An Inconvenient Truth) for starters.
Dive Deeper: More Carbon Footprint Info
Quench your thirst for more green knowledge with our Green Basics column, which appears regularly on TreeHugger.