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melting but not down

Sunday, 16 March 2008

Oh dear

Having been inspired by the excellent example of John Cossham I had a go at calculating my carbon footprint . For my first attempt I didn't get out the fuel bills or go round the house counting the light bulbs and other appliances but took an educated guess at the questions asked to get a general idea of how our household measures up. Up being the operative word - 12.24 tonnes per year - yikes! Perhaps I over-estimated in some areas (otherwise known as clutching at straws) and should probably have another go with proper statistics. One thing the carbon calculator site doesn't seem to take into account is recycling, a shame as we do quite a bit of it. Not just the usual paper, glass, tin and plastic (I've been told the latter is a bad thing - creating plastic mountains in China apparently) but also I get most of my clothes second hand from charity shops and eBay (ok, I'm a bargain-loving cheapskate). Must do better. Watch this space.

2 comments:

Compost John said...

So was this your household footprint? If so, divide it by the number of people in your house. The Act On CO2 calculator gives you the option to get an individual figure too, but this is just a straight division by the numbers in your house...
Have you worked out what are the largest parts of your footprint?
Do you drive or fly? Are your fuel bills high or is it something else?
Do you need to invest in making your house less heat-leaky, or switch to a renewable electricity supplier like Good Energy?
Good luck with reducing your footprint, I am here to help if you want!
Yours, John Cossham

Lily said...

This was the footprint for a household of three, which cheers me up a bit I suppose! Our biggest expense is travel - we live in a village with no public transport so we all have cars. I must have another go at filling in the info properly. I won't have helped my carbon footprint by spending three hours on the computer tonight, re-installing the driver for my printer and then finding it wouldn't print out certain types of files. I have a love-hate relationship with computers, love messing about on them, hate not knowing enough to fix problems. I should go to bed now but I feel I've deserved a bit of play time after all my efforts!