Carbon footprint is actually the total amount of carbon emissions by you due to your daily activities. This carbon footprint is actually calculated for all the greenhouse gases that are emitted in the atmosphere because of our daily activities. These daily activities may include production of carbon dioxide because of the use of electricity, vehicles, natural and propane gas and many other activities. This article on how to calculate carbon footprint will help you in calculating your individual carbon footprint.
Usually these carbon footprints are calculated on annual basis. To calculate your carbon footprint throughout the year, you need to keep track of the carbon dioxide emissions by you throughout the year. Mostly, major sources of carbon dioxide emission are considered for calculating carbon footprint.
Calculating carbon footprint manually
You can calculate the carbon foot prints manually but it requires a lot of calculations.
- Gather the bills of all the major contributors for these green house gases in your home. These utilities may include your electricity bills, natural gas bills and any other bills that are responsible for emitting green house gases. Use these bills to estimate the number of kilowatts of electricity that you use each year. Each kilowatt of electricity approximately produces one kilogram of carbon dioxide. So, the carbon foot print for this is the kilowatts of electricity you have used.
- To calculate the carbon footprint of your vehicle, divide the average number of miles that you drove in a year by your vehicle’s average miles per gallon. This will give you the number of gallons of gas that you use per year. When you multiply this value by nine you will get kilograms of carbon dioxide your vehicle emits annually.
- If you want to calculate the number of carbon footprint emission by you when travelling by airplane, calculate the number of miles that you travelled by airplane throughout the year. Multiply this number by 0.23. This will give you kilograms of carbon dioxide emission.
- When you have calculated the carbon dioxide emissions due to all these activities, add the kilograms of calculated carbon dioxide emissions. Now, divide this value by 1,000. This will give you the metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions by you. This is your carbon footprint.
Calculating carbon footprint using online calculators
- To calculate your carbon footprint using online calculators, you have to keep a track of your daily activities to get data that can be used to insert in the online calculators available for calculating carbon footprint.
- You can download these calculators from the internet or use them online to calculate the carbon footprint. These calculators are developed by World Resources Institute.
- Some of these calculators provide options for calculating carbon footprint for yourself and for your household separately.
Calculation of carbon footprint will help you in reducing the amount of harmful green house gases into the atmosphere and reduce pollution caused because of them. Calculating carbon footprint is worth it if you are doing it with a purpose of reducing the emission of harmful gases in the atmosphere.
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