Whenever I read a piece in the newspaper, or see a report on the news about climate control, the word that seems to crop up more often than not is ‘carbon’. Now, I don’t know about you but I really am not sure what is meant by this, so I thought I’d do some reasearch.
According to the get green now website the word ‘carbon’, actually refers to the six main gases which contribute to Global Warming, in the eyes of the IPCC. The gases refered to are Carbon Dioxide (CO2), Methane (CH4), Nitrous Oxide (NO2), Hydrofluorocarbons (HFC), Perfluorocarbons (PFC) & Sulphur Hexaflouride (SF6). Apparently when they’re released into the atmosphere these gases hold onto the sun’s rays, increasing the average temperature and causing the greenhouse effect.
Carbon Offsetting is the process of supporting projects that reduce carbon emissions, and therefore offsetting your own carbon emissions creating a carbon neutral equation. Get green now do this by only supporting UK projects of carbon reductions.
Logically, to be able to offset your carbon you first have to be aware of how much you are producing. To this end I have managed to find a number of sites that help to calculate your carbon emissions. The newest one seems to be a government one, but there are other less political calculators at carboncalculator.co.uk and carbonfootprint.com.
So over the next few days I’m going to calculate my families carbon footprint, and when I have I shall publish the results and hopefully have some ideas of how I’m going to reduce it (assuming it’s high!).
