My Carbon Footprint Story
March 20, 2020
If you fall into the population
that is doing their part to slow the spread of COVID-19 by staying home, you might have some extra time on your hands. If you would like to learn something new why not calculate your carbon footprint?
Life is busy. For at least a year, I have been wanting to get into the nitty gritty of actually calculating my personal carbon footprint but never had the time or the patience to translate my lifestyle into carbon calculations. It just sat on my shoulders as something that I should do, or would do some time soon, with the good intentioned goal of establishing a baseline and a plan for reducing my footprint over time.
Now, with a statewide shelter in place measure enforced, curiosity and good intentions land squarely into the land of enough time. I envision the world on the other end of COVID-19 as one that is drastically evaluating it’s priorities, systems, and habits for the better. Including our relationship with the economy, most vulnerable among us and our planet. Calculating our footprint is a stepping stone.
So, let’s get to work. I’ll walk you through my process.
What’s a Carbon Footprint?
(Noun); The amount of carbon dioxide (and other carbon compounds) released into the atmosphere due to the use of fossil fuels by a particular person, group or thing.
Let’s start first, with... Well, the World.
Before the COVID-19 slow down, we were active polluters. This pie chart (Union of Concerned Scientists) shows the US (16%) and China (29%) were the two largest emitters of CO2 on the planet. That is compared to the rest of the world (19%) combined.
Here’s another angle: In 2016, the US emitted 4833.1MT metric mega tonnes (that’s mega tonnes, fuel combustion only) of CO2 into the earth’s atmosphere.
Yikes!
Since COVID-19 broke out and large populations were ordered to shelter in place, pollution has drastically dropped over our busiest of cities. For later reading, The New York Times writes about this phenomenon here and here.
Great. So that is the world.
What about individual human beings?
A personal carbon footprint
is the combined emissions from our individual spending habits as they relate to our housing, our food, any products and services we buy and from our travel. For example, if I buy a product made and distributed from New Jersey to my home in California, a calculator considers the amount of carbon emitted into the air as a result of making and then shipping the product to my home. In transport alone, the product might fly 5 hours and be driven 2 hours to my front door step. That’s a long journey. So is the journey for the Norwegian farm raised salmon I recently bought at the grocery store.
The EPA (US Environmental Protection Agency) carbon calculator suggests, that the average US household emits 38,137 lbs, or 17.30 metric tonnes of CO2 a year.
Why does it matter?
Well, it’s kinda simple. The world - our beautiful blue planet spinning in the cosmic ocean - cannot sustain with the level of emissions we are dumping into our atmosphere. Sounds pretty serious, right?
Recently, the UN released a report revealing that global emissions must be reduced by 7.6% per year between 2020 and 2030 in order to reach our Paris climate agreement goal of 1.5C. That seems to be a radical move forward, when for the past 10 years, the world has been increasing emissions, and the United States, one of the world’s largest polluters is stepped out of the agreement. Interestingly, in an unprecedented turn of events, we and our carbon, have been stopped in our tracks by COVID-19.
So, what’s in a story?
Whole nations have carbon footprint profiles, and so do we. Each and every single one of us. And, it tells us a lot about ourselves! It also provides us with a baseline to measure our progress against. Also, leave the shaming at the door! We all start somewhere. The point of uncovering our footprint story is - to start.
Since, every footprint has a story. Here’s mine.
Household.
I live in a shared living space. The house operates on electricity and natural gas without solar panels. Earlier in the year, 27% of our bill was attributed to sustainable energy sources (so in dollar amounts, that like $54 dollars out of $200). Personally, I can’t live in the cold, and cling to a space heater like my life depends on it in the winter. I used to take hot baths and hot showers religiously, but I at least learned to turn the faucet off when I brush my teeth some years ago.
Travel
Before I began working remotely due to COVID-19, I used to commute 38 miles to work each way in a gasoline fueled car (that’s um, 76 miles a day). In addition to my daily commute and general errands, my fiance lived 88.7 miles away from my home. In short, that was a lot of driving. Lastly, I used to fly domestically at least 1-3 times a year.
Food / Shopping / Waste
In my fantasy life, I shop at farmers markets and eat locally sourced organic foods 100% of the time. Make that 1,000% of the time. In reality, I used go to restaurants often, and shop almost exclusively at Trader Joes (hello, lots of food packaging). I also used buy my lunch daily at work, transporting “to-go” containers to my office with regularity. Of course, COVID-19 changed all of these habits instantly.
As for what I actually consume, (it’s gets better I promise) I rarely eat beef, pork, bread or eat dairy beyond yogurt in my daily diet, and I shop with my own grocery and produce bags. I am not a big shopper. I actually dislike shopping for clothes. With most retail shops closed, this is completely on pause.
As for waste, I recycle my bottled water containers (if /when I use them), toiletry packages, and everything else I think is recyclable (sadly, I discovered that not everything we think is recyclable, actually is), and I put food scraps in a food scrap bin (most of the time), but still throw away a bin full of garbage at least once a week.
Great, but what does it all mean?
I entered my data into three carbon calculators and this was the result: The EPA carbon footprint calculator measured my annual household footprint to be 28,194 lbs which I converted to 12.9 metric tonnes. myclimate.org estimated that my personal CO2 footprint measured at 12.9 metric tonnes as well. It also provided an annual offset amount of $354.00 USD a year to go with it (that’s a lot). And finally, the global footprint network calculated my carbon footprint to be 12.6 metric tonnes. So it looks like there is a general consensus!
Now that COVID-19 has stopped so many of us (people + nations) in our tracks, I wonder what the effect will be -both on the climate and in our personal and collective ways of living and doing business. What will change? I have to believe and have faith it will change us for the better and steer all of our systems towards a more sustainable and better prepared future.
Where to go from here?
Calculate your own footprint and discover your own story. Here are three calculators to explore and choose from to get started (I did all three):
EPA Carbon Footprint Calculator (The United States Environmental Protection Agency)
While no one is really flying these days, if and when we begin moving about the world again, here is a aviation carbon calculator by ICAO.
As for me and my carbon cutting plans, I now have a calculated footprint baseline. Looking at my story, I can see where the bulk of my carbon emissions are coming from. The big unknown factor in all of this is what life will be like as we continue to curb the spread of COVID-19 and begin to rebuild. In the meantime, a silver lining is that this ‘pause’ has gifted me time to stop, reflect, and plan how I might do things differently on the other end.
Learn more.
Feeling overwhelmed by the long list of climate related buzz words? Fear not.
Sustainability Glossary for you here
Sustainable Food Labels list here
Organizations to follow and support is here
I wish you and your loved ones, peace of mind, health, and silver linings.
We are in this together.
From my heart center to yours,
NOEMI
