Environment - Step 2: More about your carbon footprint & Carbonfund.org

After figuring out my carbon footprint the other day, I thought I had a good idea of what my impact on the Earth was. Wrong! As I was researching different ways to reduce or offset this footprint, I found out that the carbon footprint that I calculated is only related to my family's direct energy usage and only accounts for 40% of our total carbon footprint. What comprises the other 60%? Our direct & indirect economic exchanges. So, in order to tabulate your family's entire CO2 output, you need to multiple the number generated by the calculator on American Forests website by 2.5. For instance, my family's impact based on our annual energy usage was 31.2 tons; therefore, our entire footprint would be equal to 78 tons CO2. Wow, that's a lot!

In order to be what's called "carbon neutral", our family would need to reduce or offset our entire carbon footprint, all 78 tons of it.

Now, you may be asking what it means to offset your carbon footprint. This means funding projects which eliminate an equal amount of CO2 which you are responsible for emitting. This can be through tree planting or funding alternative energy generation projects (e.g. wind towers).

While my family can't afford to offset our entire carbon footprint all at once, I decided that we would offset it over the course year. First up was offsetting the annual CO2 output from our cars. There are a number of sites that you can use to purchase offsets, the two most popular being Terrapass (http://www.terrapass.com/) and Carbonfund.org (http://www.carbonfund.org/). I decided to go with Carbonfund.org mostly based on price - I was able to purchase offsets for both our cars for $54. You can purchase offsets for any portion of your carbon footprint from Carbonfund.org; their going rate is $5.50 per metric ton of CO2 to be offset. For instance, since our two cars had an annual CO2 output of a little less than 10 tons, we were able to purchase offsets for $54.

I know that paying for these services can be difficult, so think about reducing a little of your footprint each month through offset purchases, instead of doing it all at once. If we don't do it, the Earth won't be left for our kids.

Thanks, Kara