How can we use carbon calculators and environmental data to help us lead a life that is within our carbon budget?
World Resources Institute defines carbon budgetas the ‘amount of carbon dioxide emissions we can emit while still having a likely chance of limiting global temperature rise to 2°C above pre-industrial levels.’
What would a personal carbon budget for a more optimum 1.5°C pathway? Your personal carbon budget is calculated by combining personal emissions from housing, travel, eating, and utilizing services.
Mike Berners-Lee, presents the notion of a ‘10 tonne lifestyle’ which looks at causing no more than 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per year. CO2e is a measure to combine various greenhouse gas emissions including carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and refrigerant gases. Adopting a 10-tonne lifestyle would mean reducing your emissions by at least one third of the UK and European average. Berners-Lee also warns that this isn’t a long-term sustainable target, but it can be helpful in short term goal setting for economies in the Western World. Soberingly, he notes that “it’s virtually impossible for an individual in the ‘developed’ world to get down to a 3-tonne lifestyle anytime soon.”
Carbon Brief have also created a tool which allows you to compare your lifetime carbon budget compared to previous generations. Calculate yours here.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),the average monthly carbon footprint of a UK citizen is approximately 1,000 kilograms. However,studies conducted by scientists have recommended to reach a 1.5°C pathway, we should be creating no more than 180 kilograms a month.
With this in mind, we know that that what gets measured gets managed. So, whether you’re investigating your impact as a citizen or as a business leader looking to build your organisations ‘green budget’, there are resources and outlets to enable you to do so.
The best carbon calculators to understand your footprint
Take a look at eight of the leading platforms and tools that can help you understand your impact. Uncover learnings from my conversation with Christian Arno, Founder of Pawprint, to understand how the company is empowering stakeholders to address the climate crisis.
CoolClimate via Berkeley (For citizens)
A household calculator to provide you with a carbon footprint estimate. The CoolClimate take action option provides sustainable alternatives, outlines the CO2e saved, the financial savings and the upfront cost of doing so. Users are also able to pledge money to these actions and there is a leader board.
WWF (For citizens)
A short and simple survey which evaluates your behaviours across food, home, travel and consumption. The results share how you compare to the average citizen and provide tips to mitigate your most impactful areas.
CoGo (For citizens)
CoGo is the first platform that enables its users to calculate their carbon footprint in real time through open banking data integrations. CoGo matches each transaction to a specific industry, be that fashion, insurance or groceries. It multiplies each individual spend to an emissions factor for that industry to gage the approximate carbon footprint. Read more here.
Carbon Trust (For business)
Often, when you’re a small business, it’s hard to know where to start. That is why Carbon Trust’s calculator for SMEs is the perfect companion to begin to understand how your fuel and energy usage can inform your operational behaviours and make them more sustainable.
Gov UK MacKay Carbon Calculator (For business)
The MacKay carbon calculator is an interactive tool to help businesses understand their pathway to reduce UK greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. Investigate by creating various scenarios and adjusting the levers across energy outputs to learn more about your impact.
Ecosphere + (For business)
With a focus on integrating natural climate solutions to achieve net zero, Ecosphere+ help users calculate their footprint and purchase carbon credits. With the largest portfolio of forest carbon projects in the world, you can rebalance your carbon emissions and allocate investment according to your budget.
Ecologi (For business)
Used by over 4000 organisations, Ecologi is a subscription service and was founded to create a climate positive workforce. The team at Ecologi help businesses to offset and invest money into climate projects. Through their API, you are able to integrate your organisation’s impact to gain valuable insights and data.
Pawprint (For citizens and business)
A newly launched organisation dedicated to helping communities reduce their environmental footprint. Complete the various lifestyle surveys and explore the personalised challenges to help you hit your carbon reduction goals. These range from actions such as bleeding your radiators, opting for plant-based meals, drought proofing your home and sharing second hand items. The platform has a strong emphasis on working with your family, colleagues and wider community to make a positive impact. If you are a business looking to use the platform across your organisation and join the Pioneers Program, read more details here.
In conversation with Christian Arno, Founder of Pawprint
In late 2020, I caught up with Christian Arno to learn more about Pawprint’s roadmap for helping businesses count their carbon impact. Since then, the organisation has partnered with the likes of BrewDog and raised over £1 million in crowdfunding to scale their mission to empower people to measure, understand and reduce their carbon footprint.
Christian believes data collection is essential to help us understand our impact. Through its science-based carbon information, the platform gives users their approximate footprint, tips to lead a more sustainable lifestyle, and insight into how their footprint compares to the rest of the UK.
As the Pawprint tool has a strong B2B value proposition, I asked Christian why he thought it was so important for businesses to help their employees become more sustainable. He noted that “All businesses need to have a strong purpose and walk the walk. Increasingly, we are seeing that sustainable organisations attract top talent who are keen to align their purpose to every day work. At Pawprint, we want to help employers and employees become increasingly transparent and independently manage their environmental impact.”
Never an organisation to shy away from the conversation about the climate emergency, BrewDog announced it was signing up to the Pawprint platform. As a carbon negative business, this was a logical step to help engage their teams on sustainability and meet wider business objectives.
Pawprint’s work with Small World Consulting, headed by carbon expert Mike Berners-Lee adds clout to the efficacy of the data used on the platform. “We have been working with the team for over a year, building the calculator, measuring different challenges and deriving guidance from this.” Arno states. “It’s important for us to not make people feel guilty with these numbers, we want to frame the discussion in a positive way.” This rhetoric echoes the sentiments of Berners-Lees latest edition of “How Bad Are Bananas?”.
Establishing a business during COVID-19 has not stunted the growth of the organisation. If anything, the emphasis on a green recovery and aligning businesses to a 1.5°C pathway, has cemented the need for platforms like Pawprint.
On the future – Christian envisions Pawprint to become an iconic organisation that has created a movement to turn the ride on climate change through integrated services, and incentivising stakeholders to accelerate their climate commitments.
For a quick cheat sheet to get the carbon data on everyday items to help guide your choices, head to Clever Carbon.
If you enjoyed this article, read about CoGo here.
You can also learn about the impact of embodied carbon.
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