Students from around the world calculated their class mean and standard deviations for their footprints and posted them on our world map.
Do you see differences across the globe? If so, why do you think those differences exist?
Did you use the calculator to try to reduce your footprint down to the average from a citizen of another country? What changes would you have to make to lower your footprint in this way? Are you going to try and take some of these actions in your daily life?
Student Footprints >
My Carbon Footprint- Mooresville, NC, United States
Hello all! My name is Andrew R and I am a 17 year-old junior at Mooresville Senior High School in North Carolina. Below I have listed my carbon footprint as well as the average footprint for my region.
My Footprint
Transportation- 12,801 kg
Home- 3,726 kg
Food- 2,254 kg
Purchases- 119 kg
My Total- 18,900 kg
Regional Average
Transportation- 4,184 kg
Home- 6,148 kg
Food- 3,636 kg
Purchases- 1,950 kg
Regional Total- 15,918 kg
As one can very well tell the majority of my total carbon footprint originates from my transportation score. My father happens to be a pilot and I am a very active teen driver, so my output in this category is about three times the regional average. I take anywhere from eight to twelve flights annually and I drive to school everyday, so I expected my transportation score to be remarkably high. My transportation score aside, my family and I make a daily conscious effort to reduce our total carbon footprint. We eat vegetarian meals daily, utilize a programmable thermostat in order to save money on heating/cooling bills and conserve energy, and organize individual recycling bins that we take to our local collection center every other week. For these reasons my scores in the areas of home, food, and purchases were substantially lower than those scores of my region. In the future I hope to reduce my transportation score by way of taking fewer flights and purchasing a car with better gas milage than that of my late nineties sedan.