WHAT IS YOUR….. By Tabitha Odutayo

What is carbon footprint How we calculated our carbon footprint Contents What is carbon footprint How we calculated our carbon footprint Finding out your carbon footprint Comparison Why carbon footprints affect our lives How to change this Thanks

What is carbon footprint? >.< Carbon footprint is the amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the air due to humans. NOT NATURE!! Burning fossil fuels can create carbon dioxide travelling into the atmosphere which will eventually cause pollution. Just as we leave footprints in the sand, carbon dioxide also leaves footprints in the air. THIS SHOULD NOT HAPPEN! Carbon dioxide comes from the burning of fossil fuels. Oil, gas, and coal, are all fossil fuels because they come from fossils of ancient plants and animals. Activities in daily live such as driving a car and using electricity, produce carbon dioxide emissions which is a for of a greenhouse gas. Using electricity at home can contribute at least 12% towards the emissions of carbon in the environment. Objects which use electricity such as a microwave, dishwasher, and light bulbs give out a high carbon footprint. Even providing water can use up a large amounts of energy. However, this can be different for other people.

How we calculated our carbon footprint We calculated our carbon footprint using a website called Footprint Calculator. http://footprint.wwf.org.uk/ The website asked us all sort of questions such as: Did you travel in the last year? How many electrical supplies do you have in your home? What type of food do you eat? How many people live in your home? They based their topics around what we eat, what our home is like, our traveling, and what stuff we have. There were some questions where we could have some useful tips to read and think about. These questions helped us to find out our carbon footprint because we were able to find out which things emitted carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and how it affected us. The questions that we were asked helped to assess our true carbon footprint as it was able to include so things that we might not think contributed to carbon emissions. The questions were well established however, I think there could be some questions that they might need to add. Questions such as: Do you buy second handed clothes? Do you switch off electrical appliances at home? How frequently do you use the internet at home? These questions might help develop what our carbon footprint data is and how much it affects our world.

Finding out your carbon footprint Sometimes you can’t always go on the internet and find a carbon footprint calculator which would find out your carbon footprint for you. Instead, you can just take a written test which would help you determine your carbon footprint by yourself. There are two parts to this test. First is to see how much carbon you do emit naturally, and the second one is to find out if you can reduce your carbon foot print. When you take away your first result from the second one, this gives you the total amount of your carbon footprint. This written test will be able to let you find out how much carbon you emit into the atmosphere. The amounts ranges from 0 – 9, 10 – 19, 20 – 29, 30 – 39, and 40+. I have taken this test and I was quite happy with the first result I got from the first half of the test. I emitted about 7 tonnes of carbon footprint into the atmosphere which is quite good since I am aware of how much carbon I emit and how much electricity I use. For the second half of the test, I also got 7 again. This was quite good since it meant I could reduce my carbon footprint by the same amount I gained. This made my overall carbon footprint emission 0 tonnes. Unfortunately, this test is not too accurate due to certain exceptions such as answering a question which doesn’t specify how often you do that sort of thing.

>> COMPARISON << My footprint Sahphine’s footprint My carbon footprint weights the equivalent of 11.3 carbon tonnes. This means my way of living is not good. If everyone lived my lifestyle, we would need 1.86 planets! However, we only have one. Do you see a problem here? My footprint is 1.2 lower than the UK’s average of three planets. The meaning of ‘planets’ is if everyone lived a certain way which emitted too much carbon dioxide, we would need more planets to make everyone survive. The only problem is that we have one. So if the Earth gets polluted, we won’t be able

Why carbon footprints affect our lives

How to change this

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