I used two different websites to calculate my carbon footprint, with both results displayed above. The amounts varied across the two, likely due to different questions/options and different scales (tonne vs kilos).

I predicted that my footprint would be about the same as the average person in Australia, and higher than the average person in the world.

My total footprint is around 10,245 kgs of CO2 per year, compared to an average of 11,771 kgs for Australia, and 3791 kg (= 8358 lb) worldwide.

Transportation had the largest effect one my carbon footprint. Whilst I do walk to and from school every day, and Covid has limited travel for most of the year, we did do a driving holiday in the last year and I am a student Pilot so had a fair few hours of flying in the last year. This meant that my transportation ended up being nearly three times as high as the global average, which also reflects Australia being a first world country. My purchases was the lowest category as I very rarely buy anything. Home was the second lowest. This surprised me a bit as there are a lot of people (8) living in my house so we do use a lot of power. However, we have a lot of solar panels and a battery, so our house is nearly self-sufficient and we only use a dryer when it is raining or too cold for the clothes to dry. We only run the washing machine and dishwasher when it is full and all of our appliances have high energy ratings so are more efficient. We use natural light instead of turning on the lights where possible and are conscious or turning off lights, fans, taps, etc. when they are not needed. Food was the second highest category from my calculations. It was very close to the regional average. I expected it to be higher due to the number of people, but we do eat organic and/or locally sourced meat and produce almost all the time and very rarely get take out/fast food.

My carbon footprint was a similar total to that of my friends, but the categories varied. This was likely due to different home environments and distances to and from town/other destinations as well as diet. Most of my friends had similar purchase emissions.

My carbon footprint is similar to the national average and nearly three times higher than the global average. This was expected as Australia is a first-world country and has advanced technology and a stable economy. I did expect mine to be slightly higher than the average Australian purely due to the amount of people in my home and pilot training.

In order to improve my carbon footprint, I could eat less meat, drive less/use alternate transport, and use less water. I would like to reduce my carbon footprint in the food area especially and also work on reducing transportation as much as I can.
I believe that completing a carbon footprint calculator would be beneficial for people to see the impact they are having and find out what they can change.

---

Post comment

You must write a comment to post it!