Lower Your Carbon Footprint
February 11th, 2010
Under the Microscope
by Glynn Wilson
When David Whiteside of the new Tennessee Riverkeeper recently helped set up a deal with the Sweetwater Brewing Company out of Atlanta to exchange some cases of Georgia Brown for a blog ad, he said, “It will lower your carbon footprint too.”
Hmmm, I thought. Could be true. No more driving to the store twice a week for those 12 packs of Yuengling Black & Tan.
 |
| Glynn Wilson |
| Buy your good beer in bulk, reduce your number of trips to the store, lower your carbon footprint… |
It got me to thinking.
I suspect a lot of people don’t know what a carbon footprint is, but I figured there had to be plenty of Websites available with a Google search that would explain it, complete with an interface to calculate your carbon footprint. This is what I found, at, you guessed it, CarbonFootPrint.com
A carbon footprint is a measure of the impact our activities have on the environment, and in particular on climate change due to global warming or the greenhouse effect. 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 tons (or kilograms) of carbon dioxide equivalent.
A carbon footprint is made up of the sum of two parts. The primary footprint is a measure of our direct emissions of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels including domestic energy consumption and transportation, by car, plane, etc. We have direct control of these. The secondary footprint is a measure of the indirect CO2 emissions from the whole lifecycle of products we use — those associated with their manufacture and eventual breakdown.
To put it very simply — the more we buy the more emissions will be caused on our behalf.
I plugged my info into the boxes, and found that my carbon footprint is already pretty low by average American standards, 5.51 metric tons per year.
By comparison, the average footprint for people in United States is 20.40 metric tons.
The average for other industrial nations is about 11 metric tons. The average worldwide carbon footprint is about 4 metric tons, and the worldwide target to combat climate change is 2 metric tons.
