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Calculating your Carbon Footprint
JustCarbon is dedicated to helping people calculate their carbon footprint and easily offset it via our new platform. Rather than going through a complicated carbon credits system, businesses and individuals can simply ‘buy and burn’ JustCarbon Removal tokens (JCRs) to offset their carbon footprint.
A carbon footprint is your impact on the world, measured in tonnes of CO2 emitted. By calculating our carbon footprint, we can determine roughly how much CO2 we emit and what we can do to cut back. Calculating your carbon footprint involves adding together estimates of carbon emissions across things like your home or workplace gas and electricity consumption, travel, food and other purchases. To calculate your carbon footprint without a lot of maths, simply answer a few questions and our carbon calculator will provide your estimated annual emissions.
What is the average carbon footprint?
The global average in 2019 was around 4.6 tonnes per person. In the UK, the average was around 4.85 tonnes in 2020. So, we’re a little over the average. However, that figure goes up dramatically when we include other types of greenhouse gas emissions in addition to CO2. In order to keep the global temperature rise under two degrees, we need to aim for less than 1.8 tonnes of CO2 emitted per person by 2050. That’s a 63% reduction of everyone’s carbon footprint! To achieve this huge reduction, we all need to consider ways in which we can reduce our carbon footprint.
Benefits of calculating your carbon footprint
By calculating your carbon footprint, you should be able to see some areas where you can reduce your emissions. There may be some big changes that will significantly reduce emissions, such as reducing the number of flights you take, for example. However, it could be the small changes to your daily routine that are likely to have the biggest impact overall.
A normal 60 Watt incandescent lightbulb, for example, creates up to 152kg of CO2 emissions per year as a result of electricity generation. If your home or office has around 20 lightbulbs, that equates to around 3.04 tonnes of CO2 per year! A simple change to LED lightbulbs could reduce that by around 75% since they emit just 22kg of CO2 per lightbulb per year. They also last up to 50 times longer, reducing waste and manufacturing emissions.
What can you do about unavoidable emissions?
Even if you took no flights, installed LED lights, recycled everything, bought local food and composted the waste, you will still be emitting carbon. It’s unavoidable unless you lived in a cave, foraged all your food, and never used any transport or healthcare services. That doesn’t mean it’s pointless to make reductions, however, since you can always offset your unavoidable emissions. This means contributing to carbon reduction or removal projects either directly or by purchasing and ‘retiring’ carbon credits or JCRs.
Every carbon credit or JCR represents one tonne of CO2 reduced or removed. So, the more you reduce your footprint, the less CO2 you have to offset. At JustCarbon, we are focused on high-quality, nature-based, Gold Standard certified carbon removal projects. Purchasing and retiring (aka ‘burning’) a JCR equates to removing one tonne of CO2 from our atmosphere.
The money invested through the purchase of JCRs goes straight into the carbon removal projects, helping fund their expansion and refinement. Over time, this should help reduce the cost and improve the efficacy of carbon removal projects, making your investment in the environment go even further!
Discover some of the projects JustCarbon supports
Last modified 8mo ago