What is a Carbon Footprint?

Your Carbon Footprint is a measure of how much carbon dioxide (CO2) is emitted annually into the atmosphere as a result of your day-to-day lifestyle. It encompasses all the daily activities you do and allows you to understand more clearly what impact your regular lifestyle has on global warming as a whole.

Your Carbon Footprint is built up by considering many different elements of your day-to-day actions and applying a CO2 emissions calculation to each of these. The most common and most frequently calculated elements include:

• Your home's annual electricity and gas usage for heating, lighting and powering your household.
• Your fuel usage for all the car journeys you undertake.
• Your portion of the emissions created by the bus, train, boat and plane journeys you take.
• The carbon impact of your shopping and consumerism.
• The impact of the production, use and disposal of your household waste.

Calculating own Carbon Footprint

You can work out your own Carbon Footprint by using the Carbon Calculator tool below. Simply answer a series of straight-forward questions about your lifestyle, home energy usage and transport activities, to calculate your Carbon Footprint.

Note: The calculator tool is powered by CarbonFootprint.com and any links contained within the calculator below refer to/direct you to their website NOT the Big Green Switch website.