I hear environmentally conscious people talking about reducing their carbon footprints all the time, so I decide to start from there. I know the goal is to use less carbon.... (hold your applause, please...) but how exactly to achieve that and what it all means in the grand scheme of things eludes me. So I do what I do to find out the answer to all of life's conundrums: google it.
I click on the most trusty-looking search result that comes up (how can www.carbonfootprint.com be wrong?) The first thing I notice is that they offer a calculator to determine what your carbon footprint is. Score! This will be like the fitness assessment for the living healthy phase... I can use it as an outcome measure! (Sorry...can you tell I work in research?)
So I start to fill out the form. After asking me about where I live and such, the first tab probes for home electricity usage information. Specifically, it asks me how much electricity, natural gas, heating oil, coal, LPG, propane, and wooden pellets are used in my house in the last year. This is problematic for several reasons. First of all, I know so little about it that I barely even know what applies to me. What is LPG? How on earth am I supposed to know how much coal we burned last year? And who knew wooden pellets are actually used as a home energy source? Good god. This tab is hopeless. I'll have to bother the electricity guru in the house (aka my father) for this information later.
I move onto the next tab feeling even more enviro-ignorant, hoping I'll fare a bit better here. Ah, flight information. I can do that! The next one, car mileage, is also fairly easy - aside from learning how to drive last year, I can count on both hands the number of trips I've actually made in the car, so I'll give it a guess and say 500km worth. The next tab doesn't apply (don't ride a motorbike), so I move to the bus and transport one. It proceeds to ask me the number of kilometres I've traveled on the subway or bus in the past year. SERIOUSLY?? Who actually keeps track of this stuff?? Hmmm. I haven't really got the slightest idea, but I decide to assume I go an average of 10km a day...which equates to about 3600/year. *Shrugs* at least it's an answer.
Finally, I move to the last tab: "Secondary". This asks me about lifestyle habits. Nope, not a vegan. No, I don't purposely buy organic or in-season food. I also don't grow all of my own food or purposely buy local. (This is starting to make me feel guilty...) Next it asks me about my fashion and technology purchasing habits. It asks me if I recycle and if I engage in carbon-usage activities (apparently going to the movies, restaurants or bars fall into this category...) It asks me how many cars I own. (YES! I'm good for this one - zero!)
And finally...done! I click calculate (despite knowing the result will be inaccurately low since I skipped that home usage part, which probably accounts for a lot of it).
Regardless, it tells me I use 8.58 tons of carbon per year, and that the average Canadian uses 20. This makes me feel less bad about some of those last questions, although I'm sure my actual total is a lot closer to that average number. Then it tells me that the world target per individual is 2 tons per year. WOW. This means the average Canadian uses 10 TIMES the amount of energy they should. Poor environment! Well, this is certainly going to be an uphill climb. Apparently it's going to take a lot more than just me turning off my VCR at night to save the earth.
Which brings me to what I'll be exploring in my next post: How to reduce a carbon footprint! Stay tuned, friends...
xo Janine
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