Well here I am the other side of my footprint measuring experiment. While filling in all of the gory details I was surprised to find how different each calculator was. Some go into intimate detail of what appliances you have, how often you use them and how old they are while others don’t. I had to put in my electricity and gas usage as expected and how many KM I drive and how many flights taken. Only one calculator asked me about other shopping habits such as clothes bought, avoiding packaging and sourcing locally – interesting.
For the record I think we use around 9855 KWH of electricity a year, around $600 of Gas and drive our family Holden wagon about 15,000 KM per year. We also take on average 4 short haul flights per year (usually me for business) and we have a detached home (with rather randomly placed insulation). I cringingly had to admit to my carbon conscience (calculator) that I never buy organic food (too expensive), I still (god forbid) eat meat and I am rather bad at avoiding packaging. I definitely have some way to go to win the award for “best green lifestyle”.
Anyway here we go.
If I believe the carbon calculators the average Australian household’s carbon footprint stands at between 13 – 16mt CO2 per year. I am going to settle on 14.5mt being average.
My carbon footprint came out (on average) at a rather inflated 16.5mt – I am not devastated by this. I did think that we would be quite high as our car is a fuel guzzling wagon, we have a pool and live in a detached house.
Food for thought….. I will now start to formulate my action plan.
