Carbon Footprint

Carbon Footprint is a term used to describe the amount of carbon you use on a daily basis to support your life. It varies depending upon lifestyle and necessity as to each person's ability to make their footprint smaller so every case will be different.

It is called your carbon footprint because it is the mark you leave on the world in carbon emission, but it acts more like a footprint on the moon; there until something gets rid of it. Everywhere you go if you produce carbon emissions then you are leaving a footprint that will harm the environment somewhere. You can expect your footprint to stay harming the environment for around 30 years after it was made as this is roughly the time before the mechanisms within the environment can reabsorb the carbon into the carbon cycle. This is why people try to reduce the size of their footprints all the time, so they can minimize their effect on the environment.

There are many online calculators to gauge how big your footprint is but essentially they work by taking details of how long you use carbon guzzling appliances and times' that figure by the amount of carbon used per second and you get your usage per day. Some calculators will even tell you how many Earths we would need to support the population if we were all to live in the same way as you, that can show you if you are above or below the usage that can be coped with, if you are below then you are said to be carbon neutral but this doesn't mean that you can't reduce the size of your footprint any more. Plus this doesn't account for any unusual unique events where you may use more carbon, and they use national averages for carbon usage so they may not be exact for you, they are just rough estimates and shouldn't be taken as fact.

Experts on carbon saving can calculate your footprint exactly and offer unique advice on how to lower it on a case by case basis not just general advice that everyone should conform to. They are therefore worth the money but only as a second choice.

If you take the idea of a carbon footprint for one person and scale it roughly up to the 7 billion people on the planet. You may think this means your one footprint changing won't make a difference, but if one person changes and they convince the people around them to change then it soon spreads, The entire planet could be saved all from the actions of one person and their courage to stand up and make a difference for others to follow.