CARBON FOOTPRINT

Carbon Footprint



Carbon Footprint

Part 1

The carbon footprint is a measure of the total amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions that are directly or indirectly caused by an activity or that are accumulated over the life span of a product, person, and organization—or even a city, state, or nation. The term carbon footprinting refers to a measure by which a company or individual can calculate how much carbon or CO2 equivalents they have produced and emitted during a project or time period. The full carbon footprint of an organization (including municipal agencies) encompasses a wide range of emissions sources, from direct use of fuels to indirect impacts such as employee travel or emissions from other organizations up and down the supply chain (Chafe, 2008, 69).

When calculating an organization's footprint, it is important to try to quantify as full a range of emissions sources as possible to provide a complete picture of the organization's impact. To produce a reliable footprint, it is important to follow a structured process and to classify all the possible sources of emissions thoroughly. A common classification is to group and report on emissions by the level of control that an organization has over them. A standard classification is defined by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, a widely used standard for corporate emissions' reporting produced by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the World Resources Institute.

There has been a rising awareness of the social and ethical responsibility of business among many stakeholders such as consumers, government, and environmentalists. This awareness and laws governing pollution emissions, particularly from greenhouse gases (GHGs), for example, carbon dioxide (CO2), has prompted many companies to reexamine both their methods of production as well as the negative impacts of their products on the environment. The carbon footprint is one such method for examining the environmental impact of industry. Generally, the carbon footprint refers to the total CO2 and other GHGs that are released into the atmosphere when products are created, consumed, transported, or stored. For a business, the carbon footprint represents the effect an organization has on the climate based on the total amount of GHGs produced, measured in equivalent units of CO2 (Stern, 2007, 63).

Carbon footprints can be labeled as primary or secondary. The primary footprint measures direct emissions of GHGs that are discharged in a way fully controlled by humans or organizations. Examples of primary footprint are using coals to generate electricity and heat and burning gasoline to power vehicles for transportation. The secondary footprint measures indirect emissions of GHGs throughout the entire life cycle of an individual, organization, product, or event. For instance, an individual who purchases a laptop is indirectly responsible for the emissions and the computer's carbon footprint, which is the combined emissions throughout the life cycle of the product, including preparation of raw materials (Raupach, 2007, 104).

Part 3

Calculating a carbon footprint can be a complex task. In addition, published carbon footprints are rarely comparable for several reasons:

Despite emerging international standards, not ...