We all contribute to the emission of carbon into the atmosphere; we at the Yerba Mate Tea Gourd were curious to find out what our own combined personal and business carbon “footprint” was. (A “Footprint” is the direct and indirect emission of carbon into the atmosphere—as instigated by a certain entity.) Using the results of several carbon footprint calculators our household and business’ carbon impact is regarded as being “much smaller than average.” This is mainly due to the fact that we drive as little as possible and have a highly-insulated straw bale house.
One calculator rated our carbon creation as being potentially offset by the planting of 9 trees… which we were happy to hear—as our personal acres of trees (which we keep the logging companies from cutting) ought to be doing some good in this aspect!
The world of carbon footprint estimation is, for better or worse, as wide and varied as life. Of the several calculators we tried all were different, gave different results, and quoted different “facts”. Nevertheless the results were all statistically similar—showing we use from 66% to 76% less carbon than the national (U.S.) average (which is kind of like comparing a T.V. dinner to prison food and saying it tastes great!) Nevertheless we’re relatively happy about the results—but don’t doubt we can improve. If we achieve greater success with growing our own organic garden this year it would be—at this point, according to the calculators—our greatest carbon savings potential... as well as a welcome boon to our health!
Here are our various breakdowns (as well as links you can follow to do your own carbon assessments):
House & Shop—00.596
Flights—0.000 (only because the calculator didn’t accept .2 flights per year)
Car—2.156
Bus & Rail—0.000 (Only because bus and rail systems here are appallingly absent.)
Secondary Sources—3.940
__________________________
Total 6.692
Carbonfootprint.com also states that…
• The average footprint for people in United States is 20.4 tonnes.
• The average for the industrial nations is about 11 tonnes.
• The average worldwide carbon footprint is about 4 tonnes.
• To combat climate change the worldwide average needs to reduce to 2 tonnes.
One of the 'swankest' calculators was done by the Nature Conservancyhttp://www.nature.org/initiatives/climatechange/calculator/?src=f1
and it has great pie charts. We all like pie and these showed us, very graphically, that our greatest debt to the planet (and ourselves) was in being able to grow our own food (pie included, I’m sure). We do what we can already, but this is a great excuse to tell Marisa I need to spend more time in the garden, the orchard—and make and eat more pie!
Our estimated greenhouse gas emissions on the Nature Conservancy site were 27 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent per year—below the national average in the US of 110 tons… but falling short of the world average of 22 tons.
WHERE WE CREATE OUR PERCENTAGE OF CARBON:
U.S. Average breakdown of 110 tons:
Driving & Flying (44.3%)
Recycling & Waste (4.4%)
Food & Diet (15.1%)
Home Energy (36.2%)
Our breakdown of 27 tons:
Driving & Flying (20.5%)
Recycling & Waste (7.7%)
Food & Diet (51.3%)
Home Energy (20.5%)
Conservation fund’s "Go Zero" site calculator http://www.conservationfund.org/gozero logged our estimated carbon emissions as 11.43 tons per year. They have a tree planting program for carbon offsets.
Well, more than just seeing what we’re up to, we hope you get inspired to think again about lifestyle and what can be done to improve the world around us—whether or not we are entering into global warming is really beside the point. Stay home and share a mate and we’re pretty certain you could really do worse—for yourself or the planet.
Aspect—and tonnes of CO2
