How to Measure Your Carbon Footprint?

Carbon footprint is the sum of all greenhouse gases emitted for a product to be produced or for an activity to occur. It measures the impact your actions have on the amount of carbon dioxide, like your mark on the planet.

It is expressed as a weight of CO2 emissions produced in tonnes.

Measuring your carbon footprint helps control and regulate the emissions you produce to help combat bigger global issues such as climate change.

It is vital to measure and calculate the carbon footprint of big entities like organisations and countries to understand the factors that need to be regulated to reduce excessive carbon emissions.

In this article, we will learn how to easily calculate your carbon footprint.

You can calculate your carbon footprint through various resources online. Many websites provide free tools and calculators that can calculate an individual's carbon footprint.

An online calculator takes your energy use, transportation, food and other lifestyle choices into account to calculate the amount of carbon emitted through your activities.

You can also use Digit’s Carbon Footprint calculator on the app. Simply download the Digit App and navigate to our Carbon Footprint Calculator.

Digit's Carbon Footprint Calculator considers three parameters:

1. What type of house do you live in?

2. What is the annual distance you travel?

3. What type of diet do you follow?

After you've entered all your information, you can view your carbon footprint.

Considering the differences in GWP (global warming potential) for each gas, we can estimate an entity's carbon footprint in CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalents). CO2e is much more accurate than measuring CO2 because it considers all greenhouse gases, not just CO2.

Calculating your carbon footprint takes lots of different factors into account. You may not be able to get an exact figure to represent your carbon footprint, but you can get a close estimate. With this information, you can take steps to regulate and control your carbon emissions.

It is important for businesses and organizations to calculate and understand their carbon footprint as these emissions have the most impact on our environment. Then, they are required to take the necessary steps to measure and control emissions.

The process of calculating the carbon footprint of a business or organisations involves 4 steps:

1. Identifying the Sources

To achieve carbon neutrality or net-zero, a business must know exactly where the emissions are coming from. Major sources include burning of fossil fuels, transportation, electricity consumption, etc.

2. Collect Quantitative Emissions Data

The next task is to collect quantitative emissions data, which can be done by - looking at utility bills for energy consumption, noting miles travelled for transport emissions, or tracking waste generated for landfill emissions.

3. Convert the Data and Calculate Your Footprint

To accurately calculate your carbon footprint as a business, convert the collected data into translatable values of emission factors. The common equation to do this is:

GHG emissions = data x emissions factor.

Then, add up the totals of each activity measurement to determine the total carbon footprint.

4. Standardize the Process

A standardized process of calculating your business' carbon footprint can help monitor yearly emissions and quickly identify irregularities. You can also include events/activities that are recently developed to track all emissions.

Carbon Footprint for organizations and companies are measured in three scopes:

• Scope 1 - Direct Greenhouse Gas Emissions: These are emissions which are directly released into the air. They are generated by activities such as:
  • Emissions from boilers, furnaces, or generators burning fossil fuels
  • Emissions from motor vehicles, industrial processes, etc.
  • Emissions from waste or wastewater treatment from installations
• Scope 2 - Indirect Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Energy: These are emissions associated with the consumption of purchased energy. They are not generated directly but are the result of a company’s activities.
• Scope 3 - Other Greenhouse Gas Indirect Emissions: These are emissions resulting from activities which are outside an organization’s control or ownership. Business travel, waste disposal, purchase and transport of material by a third party come under this category.

The carbon footprint of a product includes greenhouse gas emissions produced during a product’s life cycle, right from the extraction of raw materials to waste disposal. It is difficult to accurately calculate the total emissions of products because of the ripple effect.

Each product is manufactured in a company which has its own carbon emissions that need to be factored in. Then, there are the production and transportation emissions of each part of the product and the final product itself.

Another factor is changes in the economy and environment which indirectly affect the fluctuating amounts of carbon emitted.

The ripples go on and on forever. Attempts to capture all these stages by adding them up individually will result in an underestimate, because the task is just too big. The best approach is to use an input-output analysis to break up the known total emissions of a country into different industries and sectors.

Take for example, a car. The carbon emissions vary from the model of the car, the type of fuel consumed, duration and frequency of usage, etc.

• The average passenger vehicle emits about 400 grams of CO2 per mile and about 4.6 metric tons of CO2 per year.

Below, we will list the approximate carbon footprint of various products.