Is your footprint above or below average? And do you care?

[Cam77]

Is your carbon footprint above or below the national average - and if it’s above do you feel bad about it? There are some good calculators online which quiz you on every aspect of you lifestyle. For what it’s worth I’m below average on most metrics - food consumption, energy usage (average sized home with good rating), don’t drive (work from home), only one kid, etc. However, I do fly a fair bit including one long haul every couple of years (12 hour return flight to visit family) - and that alone bumps me right back up to around the national average. I feel kind of bad about it, but there you go.

Never found one comprehensive enough to give a satisfactory result to be honest.

One that analysed my travel quite well used my house size to estimate energy usage. One that was accurate on energy very crude for food miles and travel etc. Most don't take any account whatsoever of comsumption of clothes and use of makeup/beauty treatments and services.

I suspect I come out average-ish once you take everything into account.

Don’t really understand people who don’t care. Are you living on a different planet to people that do?

@TheJoxter - I care but my job involves frequent long haul travel and as both our families live overseas we travel to visit them. We have a large house but can’t change that.

I did the wwf one and came out as average. It didn't ask if I have kids so I view as pointless result.

@Parker231 the important thing is that you care! Those are things beyond your control and I won’t judge you for them. Someone on the first page said they don’t care and that’s the attitude that bothers me.

I did the WWF one but it's not accurate enough.

I came out as above average, purely because I have a 4 bed detached house. But we are terrifically careful about our utilities, and use a lot less water, gas & electricity than many people we know who have 2 bed houses.

I'll be honest, there are changes we could make but i am not willing to. Eating meat is the big one. In the UK, farming to produce meat is quite a good use of the type of land we have in many areas, also in terms of the weather we have, so I don't think it's that terrible to eat local meat rather than importing the things i would need to eat to have (for example) a sufficiently nutritious vegan diet. Also i really really like to eat meat. We are trying to cut back though.

I'm also not willing to give up owning a car. It is too convenient, we are time poor, and use it to make journeys thar would take 2 or 3 times longer on public transport (As well as costing more). We have agreed our next car will be electric, but we won't buy that until our current car is well & truly knackered.

We have already switched to a renewable electricity tariff and a carbon neutral gas tariff & replaced inefficient white goods with better rated ones. We have also changed our food buying to buy predominantly seasonal and local produce, and avoid unnecessary packaging.

A bit below average for this country but above average on a worldwide scale - and I do care!
-no flying
-fairly low emissions car, but still use it quite a lot
-less meat than my husband would like!
-cloth nappies
-low food miles
-pretty low consumption and try to buy second hand
-Often walk places
-heating kept low except for guests

Oh and we have massively reduced travel. We did UK holidays only last year. DH did one long haul flight for work, argued against it as unnecessary and has told his boss that the planned annual repeat visit does not need to happen. My baby boomer parents are far worse, they travel a huge amount, drive a large gas guzzling car each, overheat their home etc.

I don't know and I don't feel like doing a calculator now. I do know I could do better.

Considering the household as a whole. Good things:

I am around average but a significant proportion is travel for work. I wish there were more alternatives to planes and also more tone afforded to train or bus instead of plane trip in work time.

A lot of the calculators assume that if you spend a lot you buy a lot of stuff. It does not take into account that some people spend a lot on very little. For uk consumers buying branded expensive items can often be better for the environment as
a) quality goods last longer
b) often use more expensively but more sustainable produced materials
c) may be produced locally, reducing transit costs
d) high proportion of money spent may be brand related and thus remunerate services not goods (design etc).

Example:
Consumer A spends £100 buying 10 cheap t-shirts, flown in from Bangladesh, produced using the cheapest possible cotton grown in an unsustainable way.
Consumer B spends £100 buying an expensive t-shirt from ethical brand using sustainable materials etc. A high proportion of the cost goes on the higher cost of sustainable materials etc.

Just because people spend more does not mean they buy more stuff

Absolutely huge !!!
I fly abroad long haul on gratuitous holidays 5 times a year
Drive a big BMW
Have 95 bulbs in my house
Flush my tampons down the toilet
Love Las Vegas
Eat meat meat meat

But hate China and their products as they are a huge contributor to the global mess

Mine will be low purely because we have no money! Can't afford to drive or go abroad, live in a tiny house and eat less meat because it's cheaper. At least some positives from it!

the WWF calculator is not intended as a serious tool. It’s the equivalent of the “what’s your skin type?” quizzes that beauty marketers use to get your attention. It’s an interactive marketing tool, designed to get you clicking on the WWF website and maybe joining or supporting their campaigns, and maybe to educate you a bit - hence the blurb alongside each section. Of course they don’t ask how many children you’ve got! WWFs target market are middle class families: why would they seek to alienate them?

So why do they bother to include a fairly useless carbon footprint calculator on their site? Because they know that individual choices do not make a blind bit of difference in reality. They want to gather as much support as possible to convince the government that legislative changes are needed. They can only do this if they can demonstrate public support - and the footprint calculator is part of that marketing strategy.

487% on the WWF calculator
Could have been worse
Most was on travel -5 flights
One year I took 12

Mine was 151% on wwf.
Big detached house
Work all over the county
Big diesel car (simply couldn’t get up the hills for work in our little runabout)
3 kids
Don’t fly due to fear 😕
Don’t eat meat all the time
Rarely buy prepackaged
Recycle as much as the council allows

There’s not really a lot I can do, we fit in our house fine, there are no unused rooms, I have to drive for work, could perhaps turn the heating down a bit!

89% with an arrow pointing down? Can anyone explain that?

I’m veggie, housebound, recycle loads, flat is insulated and double glazed but no solar stuff as mid building flat and well... Scotland! It weirdly gives the option to say you don’t use buses or trains but yet assumes you fly at least once a year?! I don’t even when I’m not housebound and most people I know don’t fly every year even.

I’m under occupied now dd has her own place. Not practical for me to compost and council stopped recycling food I’m not sure why.

But quite honestly I get fed up with us being nagged to take individual responsibility when there are large organisations, companies even whole countries who are doing sod all!

Their impact is far greater and the changes they could make would be a greater contribution to reducing harm.

Surprised myself and it's less than average. 80% if the target so I'm doing well. Couple misleading questions because I travel most by car but I use my car 1-2 times a week for shopping only unless we have hospital apps otherwise I walk everywhere.

I try my best in my personal life but the biggest impact in what I do is in my work and so I changed the way I practice and now push a much more sustainable approach both with regards to emissions, energy use but also material & resource usage with clients. It can be quite complex as sometimes the choices aren't black and white but I now strive to go above and beyond regulations (minimums) and push clients to look at value differently from just straightforward cash costs.

I wonder what the point of these calculator are and no I haven't done one - on the first page it asked for energy consumption in kilowatts and I have no clue - I just know I can afford my direct debit.

But really, other than making you feel anxious/righteous and finger pointy, what purpose do they serve? Most individual attempts to combat environmental issues are as nothing compared to even a handful of coal fired power stations and widespread municipal failure to recycle, neither of which we as individuals can do anything about.

It's almost as though policy makers want to load us up with a perceived sense of responsibility when we have none and no power either. Also to charge us loads of money or otherwise inconvenience us (bagless food delivery anyone?) and tell us that if we don't cough up we're killing the planet.

And mine didn't even take into account my heated Koi pond - because it didn't ask.

you're right, I don't care if some die. The biggest problem for this planet is actually too many people.

One of the reasons I don't have kids.

so even if I'm t 400% plus carbons foot print - take into account I don't have kids, who won't go on to have kids themselves - I've more than done my share

The WWF says I’m above average. But the questions aren’t detailed. I know for instance we use 40% less electricity than most in our neighbourhood. Our bills are about US260 a month and theirs US500-750!! We couldn’t even afford that size bill. No clue what they’re doing to use so much .

The issue is industry. There needs to be clean fuel, clean manufacturing, local recycling (not shipping it all to China), buy local, and stop the consumerism. Stop buying cheap plastic shit that’s made in factories in developing nations that is then shipped across the world and ends up in landfill within a short space of time. Stop concreting over everything, more trees, more green space.

There is also no train system in the major city I live near to and buses don’t exist in our town, they do in the city but are used by lower socioeconomic groups. There are some park and ride systems that you can organise for your workplace but that’s it. It needs a shift in thinking. Our town doesn’t want a bus system as it brings “undesirables” to the area

Mine was surprisingly high (I think 76%)

We have:
Moved from a larger electrically heated rural house to a smaller terraced in the town
Gone to 1 car
Ride bikes everywhere
Got solar panels
Tend to buy 2nd hand
Have virtually no food waste and no un-prepare food waste at all
Recycle everything
Stopped flying
Started an eco business

I was sad it wasn't better & I really really care and have done since the 90s

I'll be average, though some of that is due to renting and not being able to save energy in the home.

I don't fly, take the bus or walk, buy second hand, eat meat once a fortnight.

It's not enough. This year I need to reduce dairy, reduce food waste, and think about switching to a different power company.