A Big Footprint

Having completed an online carbon footprint calculator I was a little perturbed to find that I was twice the average person in the UK. However in reality it should not have been much of a surprise as flights accounted for the majority of Co2 produced. Here is the run down of my emissions, so to speak.

	Your personal share of CO2 (kg) / Target	UK average household CO2 (kg)	UK average CO2 per person (kg)
Gas, coal and oil	1,900 / 1,000	3,876	1,615
Electricity	1,480 / 900	3,127	1,303
Private Car	669 / 300	2,600	1,083
Public Transport	0	869	362
Holiday Flights	8,600 / 0	1,562	651
Total Primary Footprint	12,649 / 2,200	12,034	5,013
Food and Drink	585 *	1,404	585
Clothes and Shoes	486 *	1,166	486
Car Manufacture	715 *	1,716	715
Buildings, Furniture and Appliances	982 *	2,358	982
Recreation and Services	1,546 *	3,711	1,546
Finance and other services	361 *	865	361
Share of Public Services	1,276 *	3,062	1,276
Total Secondary Footprint	5,950 *	14,282	5,950
TOTAL FOOTPRINT	18,599	26,316	10,963

* Taken as UK average figures

So after this I decided to create a carbon footprint reduction plan to reduce the Co2 emissions over the next 12 months. To be average I need to reduce my emissions by 50%, and to ensure climate change is negated (my share anyway) I need to reduce my emissions by 87%. My target for this year is to reduce to 2.2 tonnes of Co2 before my secondary footprint. It will be tough, I will be investigating installing Cavity Wall insulation which can reduce heating costs by 40%, the introduction of solar thermal hot water panels to my home, and planting plants to absorb Co2. Each step will be recorded in this blog.