Carbon Footprint

Studying yoga has allowed me to be more in tune to how my life and actions effect my environment and the Earth. One term that I'm examining more frequently is Carbon Footprint. I wanted to add some information about it here.

A carbon footprint is a measure of the impact our activities have on the environment, and in particular climate change. It relates to the amount of greenhouse gases produced in our day-to-day lives through burning fossil fuels for electricity, heating and transportation etc. The carbon footprint is a measurement of all greenhouse gases we individually produce and has units of tonnes (or kg) of carbon dioxide equivalent.

A carbon footprint is made up of the sum of two parts, the primary footprint (a measure of our direct emissions of which we have personal control of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels including domestic energy consumption and transportation) and the secondary footprint (indirect CO2 emissions from the whole life cycle of products we use–those associated with their manufacture and eventual breakdown: the more we buy, the more emissions will be caused on our behalf.)

We can use any online calculator to find out our personal carbon footprint. I used this one from the Nature Conservatory to find that my four-person household uses 57 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent per year, which is below the U.S. national average (0f 110).