Friday, December 28, 2007

Terra Firms

Ever wonder just how big is your carbon footprint? Actually, let's back it up a step: Ever wonder what a carbon footprint is? No? Regardless, the term "Carbon footprint" refers to the amount of CO2 you release into the atmosphere throughout your life, not including breathing of course. What this does include is travel, both auto and air, electricity, fuel, and even things like clothing and food. The UK site Carbonfootprint.com illustrates a breakdown of a typical person's carbon footprint in a simple pie chart.

Now that you know what a carbon footprint is, it's time to find out just how big is yours. In this instance, bigger is definitely not better. To find how much carbon you're responsible for emitting into the atmosphere each year you can go to Terrapass.com, or for any Brits reading this, stick with Carbonfootprint.com.

Once you know the size of your carbon footprint you can assuage your guilty eco-conscience and help some worthy causes by offsetting it. Both sites provide an ingenious solution for effectively neutralizing your impact, by selling something called carbon offsets. And much like Sweden, your neutrality will make you the envy of neighboring countries, or at least your eco-conscious neighbors.

We recently purchased a year of carbon offsets for only $29.95 to neutralize the environmental impact of our new Honda Civic Hybrid through Terrapass. In addition to paying down our carbon debt we also get a neat sticker that will signify our car as being carbon neutral. As if having a hybrid wasn't cool enough!
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Places to offset your carbon footprint:
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Ed Begley Jr. explains the concepts of carbon footprint and buying carbon offsets:

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