What's Your Carbon Footprint?

Perhaps you've seen the BP commercials where they ask people
about there carbon footprint, but have you ever wondered what
yours is?

If you have indeed seen BPs commercial about carbon footprints,
you may have noticed they have a website to that you can use
to measure yours.

I would like everyone to take the test, and post there results,
not only will this be interesting, but it will help everyone by
showing them where they can do to help lower there own CO2
emissions.

Carbon Footprint Calculator


These are my results.

Annual CO2 Produced: 8 tonnes.

Percentages:
-Household energy: 92%
-Vehicle/Travel: 6%
-Waste: 2%

[edit on 11/24/2006 by iori_komei]

Neat link. I came out to about 7 tonnes. Although I didn't know what to put for some of the things, so it might be a bit more or bit less.

2 tonnes

But probably less since I guess it assumes if you have central heating that you actually have it on for more than just an hour or two per day for 2 or 3 months of the year

I'm 7 tonnes, about 50/50 between household and business travel

im 5.5 tonnes. Apparently its the Air travel that really kills it. I guess if you want to reduce your emissions, take the train

Cool Link

My partner & I total 6 tonnes per year. Not good, but the avg for australia is 14.36.

I recently switched to a small diesel vehicle in favour of my road rocket high performce large sedan.

I re did the test and changed the car section and my carbon footprint still was the same as my original test.

My new car is 3.7 approx times more fuel effecient and its fuel emmisions rating is on par with hybrids.
The old car was very thirsty hi octane consuming animal, emmisions would have been ridiculous (i could only imagine) I find it strange that switching to a smaller car had little impact.

I suppose vehicle use is a small % of my total carbon emmisions.

I'll will do better..

There is 4 in my family.



I'm sure not driving has a lot to do with my score.

Thanks for the link.

Well,it said my household uses 19 Tonnes...The average American household uses 18.58 tonnes... There are four room mates in my apartment. So...

My results were wrong, I did'nt check having insulation, because
I did'nt know I did, so after redoing it with that included, here are
my results.

Well mine came out as 10 tonnes a year, slightly more than the uk average. Which I think is a huge underestimate, as I live with 4 other people in student accommodation. I selected detached as the building is an old church hall, with 4 flats in it, 16 people in total!!! (2 flats of 5, and 2 with 3)

P.S.
Hey iori_komei, who is that in your avatar?

Originally posted by Hyacinth
P.S.
Hey iori_komei, who is that in your avatar?

Billie Piper.

Either I am the only one being honest...

We set the themo down low,
we recycle,
we use energy effecient bulbs all over...

and for a family of four...

we use

31 tonnes

Again, either my math is wacked, or everyone is living in a hut on an ashram...

Can't help taking planes for business 6 states away...

God bless America and the fragile Earth it stands on...

HDF

I'd say it's probably the planes that are doing it to your score.


I'm willing to give you the info to plug-in that I got my score
with, since I have no reason to lie.

[edit on 11/25/2006 by iori_komei]

36

Now I have a goal to strive toward: 50 by the end of next year.

Not bad I think, a large chunk is the air travel, not much you can do about that.

I watched the Al Gore “An Inconvenient Truth” movie last night and went to their site to try their carbon calculator. On theirs I Scored 11.3 at the lowest which is considered to be far above the national average. 90% of the carbon showed up in that test simply because I lived in Florida (which I assume relies on fossil fuels for energy generation), and because I owned a car. Trying other states such as NY, NJ or CA caused my emissions to drop below 8 tons. The car is a small sports car at around 10K a year, primarily to get to work.

Here is the site in case you all want to try this as well. Carbon Calculator
They recommend that I offset my driving by buying green tickets.

Now here is the odd part, I go to your carbon calculator, which is put up by a Fuel company, and using basically the same information I end up at 8 tons, and well below the national average.

Therefore, do you folks think that these two interest groups at opposite end of the spectrum skew the results, or that one of these is more accurate then the other?

I do have to admit that after playing with the one on Gores site, the only things that seemed to radically change my footprint were the state, number of people in my household, and the mileage that I drove. The rest seemed like it did little to nothing. They of course want to sell green tickets to build green projects. The BP one seemed to be more detailed in most ways, but since it has the potential to be slanted by a group that wants to sell oil, I am not sure which to believe.

Try it and let me know what you all think…


Edit to add..
I tried the BP one again and left out all the energy saving stuff, that raised me up to 12 tons, so its only a few points off of gores site.

Here is the really funny bit though, Gores site says the national average tons should be 7.5, BP claims it is 18.58...
Bit of an unreasonable difference there, someone is spinning some.


[edit on 11/25/2006 by defcon5]

Originally posted by defcon5

Here is the site in case you all want to try this as well. Carbon Calculator

On that one I come out at 0.45 .......

I guess this is what comes of not having a car, never flying and hardly ever having the heating on (well, I live in England - we only get 2 or 3 cold days a year in this country)

[edit on 25-11-2006 by Essan]

You can get away with that lifestyle in the UK. Unfortunately, we lack the infrastructure here to provide basic reasonable community transportation (with the exception of NY and Chicago). To try and take a bus in this town, a 30-minute drive turns into a two-hour headache.


[edit on 11/25/2006 by defcon5]

I must admit I'm pretty much an exception to the rule even in England - you'd be amazed the number of people who'd rather drive half a mile to the shops than walk ....

I've also been lucky in that over the years all of my jobs have been ones where it's been possible for me to live within walking distance. And I prefer to holiday in Britain, hence not flying.

I don't object to people driving and flying when necessary. I do think in many cases though it isn't quite as necessary as they like to think.

I do object to celebrities and politicians moralising to me about 'saving the planet' though. When they're often the ones doing the most damage .....

I got a six.

Some of my responses were just guesses, but I'd assume I'm pretty low since I live in a studio apartment in a big building with one shared big heating oil boiler, don't have a car and take the subway almost everywere.