// our carbon

Two students from Edinburgh University, Simon Morris & Paul Schechter designed a simple survey which was delivered door to door in the summer of 2007 . The full results are now available but the basics were: The town's total footprint was 16,156 tonnes of CO2 equivalent gases per year (excluding what we eat and what we buy). This equated to an average of 14.9 tonnes per household. Click HERE for full details .

A "carbon footprint" is a calculation of the amount of carbon dioxide equivalent gases emitted by us using electricity and burning fossil fuels, such as gas, coal & oil, in every aspect of our daily lives.Virtually everything we do has an environmental impact;.......For example:

If we eat food imported from the other side of the world, there is a huge amount of CO2 generated transporting it to this country. So we need to move back to buying locally produced food. (Although food contributes a massive 24% of the average UK citizen's carbon footrprnt, it was not included in our survey because of the complexities of calculating the carbon associated with each item)

Anything you buy which has been manufactured, has used fossil fuel during the manufacturing process. So we need to buy less of everything, keep things longer and recycle them when we are finished with them.

When we travel, we use fossil fuel, unless we ride a horse, cycle or walk. The most polluting form of transport is flying, whereas going by train is 60% less polluting. Some of today's popular 4X4 vehicles are extremely bad for the environment. Many emit CO2 as high as 300 g/km, whereas a small diesel engine car might emit as little as 117g/km. So we really need to consider the impact that our travel is going to have on the environment.

And of course one of the largest uses of energy is in the home. Keeping our houses warm, washing our clothes and dishes, heating our water, running our TVs, computers and Hi-Fi systems & lighting our homes. So again, we really need to think about this and fully switch off any unused appliances (don't leave them on stand-by) and only use them if we really need to.

WORK OUT YOUR OWN FOOTPRINT HERE

Clicking here will take you to a calculation document (kindly provided by Ashton hayes & Chester University) which will work out your approximate carbon footprint, dependant on the information you type in.