Calculating Carbon: Getting Personal About your Footprint
Contributed blog post from Cool Effect. Cool Effect is a Bay Area-based nonprofit that oversees an online platform where individuals can support funding for a collection of carefully-selected carbon reduction projects that are triple-verified and certifiably additional.
Calculating your personal carbon footprint is tricky business. A simple Google search generates results for dozens of calculators each with different capabilities. For example, one flight calculator may only account for fuel mileage whereas another may account for additional factors such as the release of vapors or radiative forcing. It’s easy to get lost down a rabbit hole of calculations, leaving one frustrated and confused.
Our Approach
Cool Effect has taken a slightly different approach when educating individuals on their personal carbon footprint. With a significant amount of data and information out in the world, Cool Effect has gone ahead and gathered the numbers for average emissions and the types of activities that contribute to one’s carbon footprint to provide people with the resources to turn that data into tangible action.
For example, the average American emits approximately 16.6 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually according to EcoShift Consulting. The primary drivers for personal emissions are energy consumption, transportation and air travel. You can find more data on carbon emissions on our website.
The average American emits approximately 16.6 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually.
One relatable data point is the significant impact of air travel. For example, a cross-country flight from San Francisco to New York City emits 1.84 tonnes per passenger. So imagine how quickly a business traveler racks up those tonnes and slowly trickles over the yearly average emissions?
The truth is that traveling, whether by plane, train or automobile, can be unavoidable. And at Cool Effect, we understand that and travel plenty ourselves! While we certainly believe that each individual should be making a variety of lifestyle choices with the planet top of mind, we also understand that without going to extremes, it can be difficult to reach net zero.
Offset Your Carbon Emissions
Luckily, Cool Effect provides a solution. We’ve done the research and combed through all of the data to better understand and educate the real impact humans have on the planet. There is something you can do about it and Cool Effect’s online platform provides individuals the opportunity to support a collection of carefully curated carbon reduction projects.
And speaking of travel, this year, Cool Effect has partnered with March for Science for a second year in a row as the official carbon offset partner, encouraging individuals to consider offsetting their travel to this year’s march by supporting one of our projects: The Ugastove Project.
For just $6.04, you can offset 1 tonne of carbon dioxide emissions by supporting this project that installs clean cookstove in Uganda. Not only will your contribution help to mitigate the impact of climate change, but it will also help the Ugandan communities where these clean cookstoves are being installed.
Ugastoves, which are locally produced, are a simple appliance and technology that allow families to spend less of their income on fuel, burn less charcoal making for cleaner air, and spend less time cooking. Because they are locally produced, the cookstoves also drive business in the area and the entire project is monitored by The Gold Standard to ensure that it is verifiably reducing emissions. To date, the project has installed over half a million stoves and prevented millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.
At just $6.04 per tonne, for a mere $102.68 you can offset 17 tonnes and breath easier knowing less carbon is being emitted into the atmosphere (and know that kids in Uganda are breathing easier too thanks to your contribution).
