Recently, a friend and I were talking about our carbon footprint and it later led to me going down a rabbit hole of figuring out how much damage that I as an individual cause to this planet. However, I was dismayed to find how awfully consistent online calculators are for determining the tonnes of CO2 I output each year.
I'm going to talk about my consumption habits here and then compare the calculators afterward. This post is meant as something for me to think out loud and is not really something I want others to follow.
Before we start
One big disclaimer: the things I do are often possible due to my economic privilege as a white, upper middle class woman. I was born in a place stolen from indigenous people, have benefitted from that, and also I do not reside in something resembling a "food desert".
Everything I discuss here is not one-size fits all nor is meant to insinuate that another person is coming up short to do their part. So much of this shit is not our personal responsibility ultimately, but I am going to avoid discussing the perils of capitalism and my personal politics overall as I just want to focus on me and me only.
Honestly, I am just sad but do not wish to be the sort of person to do nothing.
Figuring out my baselines
Okay. Having done a few calculators now, I decided to break down my actual use by determining my lifestyle and other habits. This is as good as I can make it so numbers are going to be best effort for the most part.
Car
I drive a hybrid car I purchased new in 2017 that gets anywhere between 850 and 1,000 KM on a single tank of fuel. It claims that I get as low as 4.5 L/100 KM but in winter it creeps up to around 6. So let's split the difference and say that it does 5.25 L/100 KM.
Figuring out how much I drive now took a bit more work. I found a photo from January 2022 showing 39,000 KM on my odometer. Presently, my odometer says it is at 43,000 KM. This means I do about 2,000 KM of driving in a year. However, I am not sure if I want to use that number or 6,100 KM since the overall average based on my car's age would be higher.
I do use car sharing from time to time, but the distances and frequency are so infrequent that it pales in comparison to my car use. The cars in my car-sharing service are all hybrids with the occasional electric vehicle I must add.
I think sticking with 2,000 KM is a better number since I moved to a place that is more transit accessible and intend to keep things this way. This area is a bit messy but I want to avoid pedantry.
Transit
I commute to the office three days a week via electrified rail transit over a distance of around 8 KM each way. Without getting into the weeds about things, that is about 2,500 KM of commuting per year.
Visiting friends or going to the store is often done via transit. I say that 3 days a week I'll do this separate from my work trips. On the same train, I'll do 4 KM of that per trip and 1 KM of the rest on bus. Bus is a bit messy here as I'd say 50% is done on electric trolley and the other half on diesel. Let's say this is 1,200 KM per year.
All in all I will do 3,700 KM per year using transit.
Diet
I am vegetarian. I haven't willingly ate meat in seven years and doubt this will ever change.
My weekly grocery spend is something around CA$100/week. I cannot tell you how much of it is local or not unfortunately. The only produce of import I can immediately identify is the bunch of bananas I purchase weekly.
Dining out is probably one of my biggest vices when it comes to food. It's probably on par or somewhat higher on a weekly spend with my grocery buying.
Pets
I have a cat. I buy a bag of cat food for her each month and she seems to be okay with the dry stuff. I have no idea how to figure out how her kitty litter works out.
Energy use
I can get actual, precise energy consumption.
In 2023, I used a total of 8,100 kWh, meaning that an average of 675 kWh per month of electricity is consumed. My apartment uses electric heat and has big windows, so much of my energy consumption comes from my baseboard heaters and my air conditioning.
Almost all of my lighting is LED and regularly-used lights are set on timers based on sunrise and sunset.
Travel
Last year, I took three roundtrip flights total.
One was to San Francisco with no intermediate stop, another was to Boston with a stop in Montréal in both directions, and the other was to Minneapolis with one stop in Toronto en route and another stop in Chicago for my return flight home.
Thanks to my flight tracking app, I emitted 3 tonnes of carbon dioxide on this trip. The distance works out to roughly 8,600 KM.
Comparing the calculators
Tree Canada
Inputting the above variables, it reported that I emitted 2.04 tonnes, which is a tonne short of what my tracking app reports. Even if I convert the metric tonnes to imperial tons, the difference would be nothing since rounding up would have them match.
The other problem I have here is that when I gave it my rail use, it gave a rather high output for carbon emissions despite using rail transit. I am not sure if this is accurate enough on their end or not because my gut says it believes my use is based on diesel.
The website fortunately takes into account my province's energy production, which claims to have 98% renewable resources due to its use of hydroelectricity. I could get into a rant about how hydroelectric dams are not exactly all that great, but it's a topic that is also completely out of my wheelhouse anyway.
It suggests that I plant 12 trees. I do like trees a lot.
Carbon Footprint
This one was more dire and gave me an output of 5.74 tonnes. However, it asked me about things such as my groceries, purchases, and medication, which added an 2.58 to the result. If I were to take what it marked as "secondary", it would be about as much as what the above reported.
Bus and rail came out to 0.09 tonnes, with flights being at 2.71. Again, so inconsistent here.
For a website based in the UK, it did ask me for my country and province.
Climate Carbon
Oh boy. This one says I do 7.8 tonnes a year. What is wild is that it suggests that I do 1.8 tonnes of CO2 emissions from energy consumption alone. This one is the most dire and actually inspired me to write about how screwed up these calculators are.
Global Footprint Network
This was just as dire as Climate Carbon's as it suggested I contributed 7.7 tonnes of CO2 last year. One thing it did do that was different is ask about hours I have spent in the air, which I feel is important to discuss later on.
What should I do?
As you can see, if you really want to know your impact, you're going to find yourself as lost to what your individual contribution really is.
I'm not going to stress about my diet, my in-town transportation habits, and what my cat does. I can continue to do things like buy clothes in thrift, vintage, or consignment shops and I can put off getting a new computer this year--this last one wasn't in the plan anyway but you get the idea.
If I do not fly, I really emit far less CO2 into our closed system of an atmosphere. I have flown far less in the past number of years, aided by COVID of course, but also just due to my life being substantially different than it was years ago.
I honestly prefer taking the train places, but that isn't always practical or even an option unfortunately. So moving forward if I must fly somewhere, I should consider that three hours in the air is equal to one tonne of CO2 and I should buy an offset in response.
Is this the most ideal situation? Maybe not, but many of the offsets have programmes which benefit those in developing countries. This requires further research on my end, but I'll commit to paying my 2023 flying debt once I sort this out.
There is for sure more I can do, but I can at least do the easy steps first, right?
However, this sucks to figure this out as a layperson.
