Now Me and CK have taken the Carbon Footprint test of Change.ie. Now between us I am the more right wing of the two therefore in many peoples eyes the most obviously evil towards the environment. But in terms of carbon Footprint I kick his ass. I am on 2.11 Tonnes per year and he is on 5.47. Now I think I will admit mine is probably low balled a wee bit not one hundred percent sure what my gas bill is (will check the next one). Then again I ticked ESB as supplier even though being in the UK some of my power comes from Nuclear so less Carbon footprint then ESB so overall i would say it is pretty accurate. Also CK’s is quiet high for two reasons. 1 he is going to Cuba soon so that adds 3-4 tonnes on its own (ie the difference) and his house mates are a bit more heating happy then mine. What we did for the heating calculation was take our house bills and divide by the number in the house the reasoning being that the total bill would be the carbon footprint of all people in the house and this is a per-capita basis. Most of my footprint comes from flying. (about 6 short haul flights a year 3 taken sofar). Also your clothes do get washed at 30 degrees quiet well in washing macine. Anyway
The average in Ireland is about 11 which is twice as much then either of us. So both myself and CK are very low impact indeed CK is around the Global average and bizarrly i am around Africa. (of course Carbon Footprint of what I own is not calculated hence high country numbers) One problem with the calculator is the effect of food. It those not ask how much meat a person eats or where they source their food. This has an impact and I guess has been left out due to not wanting to piss off the farmers. Personnally I have been cutting down the portions of meat I eat a week replacing it in a stirfry with re-fried beans (emmmm) which are probably flown from South America so just as bad.(still about 5 meat portions a week though)
Anyway over the next few weeks we are going to look at ways of reducing our footprint. Considering that neither of us drive and both walk or get bus to work. That we both rent so can’t improve houses we live in. Not much we can do although coming into summer the ESB and Gas bills should drop with less lighting and heating to be done.
So to any other bloggers out there. Calculate your footprint and see can you reduce your footprint. Even if you don’t agree with the ethical green D4 fashion bull.
0 SK May 7th, 2008 at 11:26 am
57 tonnes. Oh yeah. Top that!
Outside of someone with a cement kiln in their back garden I think I will be hard to beat
0 yednnek May 7th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
2.49 - I’ll take that.
Living in London is the killer though. i put down for 6 short haul and 1 long-haul flights in the year which accounted for 73% of my total. Unreal!
0 Tuathal May 8th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
4.04
I put down 2 short haul and 1 long haul flight yednnek and it amounted to 60% of my total, which is just shy of your overall so I dont know how they calculate it!
Anywho, the message they seem to be ramming down our throats here is that flying is bad and we shouldnt do as much of it. Blah blah blah.
Nuts to that I say.
In total the airline industry accounts for just 2% of the global carbon emissions each year. The same as the IT industry. On the other hand, Newsweek informed me last week that if the global shipping industry was a country it would place 7th on a list of the worst carbon offenders world wide.
And yet we never hear anybody giving out about the number of people taking the ferry across to Wales.
Typical.