You may be an environmentalist at heart but how big is your carbon footprint?
Do you try to keep your energy use under control or are you a consumer who releases tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere?
Personal choices made by each of us every day dictate how much carbon we produce and how much of a contribution we make to rising global warming.
This reporter considers himself well aware of the need to reduce carbon release but scored rather poorly when tested by a calculator. aspx">carbon footprint calculator on the internet.
The average person in Ireland, according to this website, carbonfootprint.com, releases 10.4 tonnes of CO2 each year, but my run through the calculator showed 14.56 tonnes of CO2 – well above the average.
The average carbon release in industrial countries is 11 tonnes while the world average is only four tonnes. Shockingly the target we need to reach to hold global warming in check is just two tonnes of CO2 each per year.
The calculator showed my suburban home was responsible for 7.5 tonnes of CO2 while my 1.6L car accounted for another 1.47 tonnes.
My single flight a year released 0.75 tonnes while my use of public transport, the bus, resulted in 0.2 tonnes.
Lifestyle decisions have a large impact on your carbon footprint. For example, your recycling of waste, whether you buy a lot of electronics or clothing, buying local produce and whether you are vegan or fancy a regular bit of steak all add up to a considerable output of CO2.
In my case this “secondary footprint” amounted to 4.63 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
The same website offered a range of “offsets” through which you could clear away your footprint, for example by supporting a tree-planting effort in Kenya.
Offsetting a tonne of CO2 costs €13 there. Or you could spend €18.64 for a tonne offset by backing reforestation in the UK.
Other offset options included financial support for Global Portfolio VES, which invests in carbon abatement efforts and will clear a tonne of carbon from your footprint for €10.83.
You could also support tree planting in Ireland or just start trying to reduce your footprint to bring about the improvements at a local level.
The challenge is to recognise things that have a high "carbon intensity" and then try to reduce this, says Dr Jonathan Derham of the Environmental Protection Agency.
To illustrate the point, we ran three fictional characters, a farmer, a suburbanite who commutes to work and an urban dweller, through the calculator. Which of these produces the largest footprint?
City professional
“City slicker Sam” is well off and lives in private accommodation right in the city centre. He has little need for a car but owns a large 4x4 for status and perceived security. There is a lot of status included with a large car so he has one, although it is seldom driven.
Many others take to the city streets, however, driving large 4x4 vehicles capable of pulling tonnes of weight, Dr Derham said. Yet they are used as urban transport.
“Vanity has an amount to do with carbon intensity,” says Dr Derham.
Sam doesn’t use the car often but does take flights, on average one long-haul and two trips to Europe annually. “The energy required to fly someone through the air at 500mph is enormous compared to a drive for a week in Connemara,” says Dr Derham.
Sam is fond of nice clothing, expensive electronics and imported French mineral water, all adding to his footprint. Moving water over distance, whether in a fancy bottle of mineral water or being pumped through pipes buried under the city is very carbon intensive, says Dr Derham.
Carbon footprint: 23 metric tonnes
Biggest CO2 item: return flight Dublin-Sydney: 10.1 metric tonnes
Commuter parent
“Commuter Karen” lives in the outer suburbs and looks disdainfully upon the carry-on of Sam and his large carbon footprint. She assumes her own must be very low, but is it?
Her commute into the city uses up large amounts of energy travelling the 35km daily round trip to work, and heating her spacious, detached home is also a major source of carbon dioxide. Her employer also has to provide heat so she is comfortable at work, a hidden form of carbon subsidy.
Karen does not drive a 4x4, only a mid-range sedan, but it is in regular use at the weekend with runs to get the kids to dance lessons and to GAA training and to the supermarket for the week’s groceries. All this produces CO2 and suburban living includes lots of transport.
Enlarging her carbon footprint are some of her family purchases, like mange tout peas from Kenya, yams from the US and Kobe beef from Japan.
Dr Derham describes these kinds of purchases as “reckless consumption” given the carbon implications. “The public are assuming the cost of this as our homes get flooded due to sea-level rise. The cost is spread out across general society,” he says.
Carbon footprint: 14 metric tonnes
Biggest CO2 item: Regularly eating red meat and highly packaged, imported food: 6.9 metric tonnes
Organic farmer
“Farmer Fred” has has a herd of 60 and as everyone knows they release lots of methane, a greenhouse gas even worse than CO2 for causing global warming.
But in Fred’s favour, he either grows his own or buys produce locally: no apples from New Zealand, no Dutch potatoes. Like Karen he has to drive to get to shops, banks and other services, but living on his farm he does not require all the lighting used in the city or the suburbs.
And because his home is also his office he does not require two indoor places to be kept lit and warm for his use. He gets his water from his own well and so has a very small footprint for the pump that draws it up. This is in contrast to both Karen and Sam who rely on piped urban water supplies.
Also to Fred’s credit, he has another thing going for him to achieve the smallest carbon footprint of the three of them. He has been planting native hardwood trees on his land for a decade, along with a small stand of conifers and a few acres of Christmas trees, which together act as a carbon sink.
Carbon footprint: 13 metric tonnes
Biggest CO2 item: Herd of 60 cattle: 5.6 metric tonnes
Carbon footprint calculators:
If you want to calculate your own carbon footprint then search the web for carbon footprint calculators or use the one used here:carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx
[ footprint.wwf.org.uk/Opens in new window ]
[ nature.org/greenliving/carboncalculator/Opens in new window ]
