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 Walnut Creek, CA
My total carbon footprint is 10663 kg of CO2 released per year, while the average for California residents is 9727 kg a year. Even though this is a very large carbon footprint, it comes at no surprise to me because of how many plane trips my family takes in a year. My total for transportation is 5935 kg almost completely because of all the trips I take to visit my relatives in Virginia and down in LA. All of this travel adds up to half of my total carbon footprint, which is not too surprising as I already knew my air travel would have a large negative impact on the environment.
Besides my extremely high transportation total, the rest of the categories are relatively low. For purchases, my total was 239 kg while my region's average was 1191 kg, and my total for food was 1378 kg while my region's average was 2223 kg. These totals are so low because even though we travel lot, my family tries to be as friendly to the environment as possible. We do not spend very much buying clothes and other things, and we grow many vegetables our selves. We raise worms in a Worm Bin, feed them our food scraps, then use their droppings as fertilizer in the gardening boxes. We also keep a large bowl in the sink to catch run off water when we wash vegetables and such, then use it to water the plants.
Because of all the extra effort we put into being sustainable, I am very surprised that my total for home is as high as it is. It is 3057 kg, while the average in my region is 3757 kg. I believe it should be lower because we do so much to keep our home as energy-efficient as we can. We have stopped using the sprinkler system because of the drought, we compost yard clippings, we don't air condition the house, we barely ever heat the house, we use only energy-efficient light bulbs, we limit our shower times, and most importantly we have 21 solar panels. In fact, we make so much electricity from our solar panels that the energy company pays us for our extra electricity. Having solar panels is supposed to cut the amount of CO2 emissions in half, but there was no question about them on the survey. For these reasons, I believe my home total should be closer to 1557 kg or so, which would bring my overall score to about the California average.