Calculating your Carbon Footprint

By Barrie | April 29th, 2008 | No Comments

It is four months since the nations of the world gathered in Bali to try and thrash out an agreement on how to reduce global warming. Climate scientists have known for many years that we human beings are affecting the temperature of our planet. They predict dangerous consequences if we do nothing. As an archipelago of thousands of islands, Indonesia is particularly threatened. The country cannot afford to ignore this. The main offender is carbon dioxide which is slowly choking our atmosphere. If we continue to burn fossil fuels like oil and coal at the present rate, we could cause irreversible damage to our precious environment.

Worrying though it might be, the situation is far from hopeless. Experts are clearly spelling out what can be done to alleviate the threat of climate change.

While the challenge needs to be faced by governments and industry, there are things we can all do to help tackle this. We hear about the devastating forest fires which have placed Indonesia as the world’s third largest emitter of C02. It’s all too easy to see this as something that’s too big for individual Indonesians to do anything about. That’s wrong. The way in which we conduct our lives can make a vast difference.

And many of the actions we can take to reduce C02 emissions can save us money as well as helping save the planet.

According to the leading environmental group World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the average Indonesian produces 1.7 tons of C02 each year. This figure may not mean much unless we relate to it personally and work out how much CO2 we produce in our daily lives.

WWF Indonesia is just one of many organizations that offer an online carbon calculator. By visiting their website at www.wwf.or.id/cfootprint, you can respond to a simple questionnaire which will calculate just how much C02 you and your household are creating.

Groups like WWF believe that once we have information about the levels of C02 that we create in our everyday lives, we are more likely to take steps to reduce our carbon footprint.

There are many more comprehensive carbon calculators to be found on the Worldwide Web, but the beauty of WWF’s is that it’s simple to use and tailored specifically to Indonesia.

In only a few minutes this calculator, available in both English and Bahasa Indonesia, will give a good idea about the negative carbon impact you and your household are making.

But what exactly can we do to reduce our carbon footprint?

Here are a few ideas for reducing your carbon emissions:

1. Travel: Cars are big producers of C02. Think about the amount of driving you do and try to develop a plan for reducing dependency on your motor vehicle. Are all your journeys necessary? Do you need such a large car?

The smaller your vehicle is, the lower the amount of CO2 belching out of the exhaust pipe. In Indonesia, nearly a quarter of all carbon emissions are from road vehicles. You can achieve more fuel efficiency when tires are properly inflated, using less gas and producing less carbon. Check your tires regularly.
Planes are heavy emitters of C02. With air travel booming, the impact on global warming of the airline industry is growing alarmingly. If you skip one round-trip flight a year, you do your bit to help.

2. Lighting: Consider replacing your light bulbs with compact fluorescents. These energy-efficient bulbs help fight climate change because they reduce the amount of fossil fuels that utilities burn. You can save 45 kilograms of carbon for each incandescent bulb you replace with a compact fluorescent.

3. Recycling: Products made from recycled paper, glass, metal and plastic reduce carbon emissions because they use less energy to manufacture than products made from new materials.
You can save almost a kilogram of carbon for every 20 glass bottles that you recycle. Recycling paper saves trees and lets them continue to reduce climate change naturally as they remain in the forest, where they remove carbon from the atmosphere.

4. Air conditioning: Air conditioning uses more than half the household energy in Indonesia. Turn down the air conditioning when you leave the house or go to bed. You can easily install a programmable thermostat that can save money and carbon.

5. Buying food: If you shop at a supermarket, some of the food you buy may travel in a plane from the other side of the world, burning fossil fuels the entire trip. Try to buy local produce.

Jonathan Wootliff is an independent sustainable development consultant specializing in the building of productive relationships between companies and NGOs. He can be contacted at jonathan@wootliff.com