Every year I perform a rough Carbon Footprint audit. This year we are back to ‘normal’ post-COVID. I’d encourage anyone to do the same so that we can work together to really understand what your outputs are, and really it just focuses the mind, you can’t ‘fool’ yourself. I do yearly working time audits too!
So let’s summarise 2022 and plan for 2023...
I have zero production costs for Housing (over 50 years old), Car (over 11 years old), Cycle (over 10 years old). Further, as part of this focus we have changed our energy supplier Bulb which is the UK’s biggest green energy supplier providing 100% renewable energy. And so we have no CO2 footprint for energy in the house. So on this basis for 2022
| Type | Sub-Type | CO2 (tonnes) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Energy Water Food | 0.000 0.120 1.472 | 100% Renewables UK average consumption Flexible Vegan Diet, including 25% Food Waste (reduced from the 33% average) | |
| Travel | Car | 1.155 | Astra 1.8 Design - 04/12/2019 91,695 miles - 04/12/2022 102,753 miles = 11058 over 3 years = 3685. All fuel offset. |
| Travel | Public | 0.000 | No Usage - Cycle or Run |
| Travel Clothes Eating Out Online Life | Air | 0.810 0.140 0.000 0.000 | 3 trips to Spain (holidays) with RyanAir at 3600km return at 75g per km = 810kg (0.810) tonnes. All according to https://calculator.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx?tab=3 which does not take account of the airline efficiency. All Trips offset. I’ve no clue, but I have limited clothes (my wife would say very limited) so let’s take the UK average of 140kg pa. Included in ‘Food’ above No clue for this year (I didn’t keep a record) - fixed for 2023 |
| Everything | Else | 0.000 | No clue for this year (I didn’t keep a record) - fixed for 2023 |
| Sub-TOTAL Sub-TOTAL | 3.701 1.736 | Total Carbon Offsetting where I can. | |
| Error TOTAL | +10% | 0.370 4.071 | 10% of running total to account for errors in estimations of my personal use. Total Carbon |
Now we can also see the personal targets we should be aiming for and that I need to be at 3.3 tonnes by 2030 and 2.3 by 2040. So the first target is lose 1.3 tonnes in 10 years but let’s try to get to this faster.
So this means that my 2022 consumption is 4.071 or 1.736 offset tonnes of CO2. The current amount a UK citizen consumes is 6 tonnes.
The Plan for 2023
For 2023 I’m going to try and get better data around keeping track of purchases so that I can allocate an average kg/£ to enable me to better work out the real carbon footprint.