My Carbon Footprint

I calculated my family’s carbon footprint today. At first I only calculated my own but then I realized that a lot of the things are more relevant to family activities. I was also interested in how my family’s lifestyle changed since we immigrated to Canada.

This was the result.

My family’s Carbon consumption has been increasing since we landed in Canada. I noticed there were 3 spikes in 1990, 2000 and 2007. This was due to our arrival in Canada in 1990 and subsequent trips back to Hong Kong. The increase from 1992 to 1993 was due to the purchase of our first car and the huge increase from 1995 to 1996 was due to moving out to a much larger home in the suburbs and acquiring a used car. 2007 was our worst year. I had school sponsored trips to Calgary and Philadephia and we had a family trip to Hong Kong. I also started working, necessitating the purchase of a third new car. The nature of my father’s and my work requires us to travel extensively. My brother and my mom work 10 km from the house but the bus lines in my area are so sporadic that they have to share the car.

One limitation to this review that I don’t know my family’s energy consumption at home. I would have to assume that the tiny apartment I live in upon arriving in Canada uses less energy than the house we live in now although my father hates using the heating system. I would also have to assume as my family became more settled and more wealthy, the purchases of new consumer goods (new tvs, computers, energy star laundry set gagets) have increased our carbon footprint. The last page of the calculator is very interesting to me. It seems that you can offset your footprint by planting 1.41 trees for every carbon tonne. This means that I would need to plant 190 trees to offset my family’s consumption since immigrating to Canada or 11 trees for every year.

Our average consumption in the last 17 years, 7.51 tonnes, is well under the Canadian average, 20 tonnes, however our consumption is on the upward trend. I would like to bring down our household consumption to 1996 levels.

I also calculated our consumption while living in Hong Kong to be 0.791 but this number can be biased due to childhood nostralgia. We were also a lot less wealthy at that point. I will test this when I go back to Hong Kong next month.

There are many choices I can make going forward. The lease for one of my family cars is ending soon and I shall be purchasing my own car. I will have to travel 80 km a day to go to work if I continue to live in the suburbs. If I live around Lakeshore and Parklawn, I will only have to travel 50 kms a day. If I was to use the same Honda Civic I drive now I will be decreasing from 3.197 to 1.998 tonnes per annum. If I purchase the Honda Hybrid as my next car, which I most likely will, my car-related consumption will decrease to 1.567.

Changes in what the calculator calls me my secondary lifestyle would be difficult. I tried being vegetarian a couple of years ago and missed all my comfort foods. Being Asian, many of my produces from for overseas although I can make an attempt to buy from the farmer markets more regularly as opposed to being a treat. I started requesting no packaging for my purchases a year ago, after seeing bans on plastic bags in Hong Kong and in China and it was less of a hassle than I originally anticipated. I suppose it was more of an aesthetic thing. My family never used plastic bags when we lived in Hong Kong but our clothe bags seemed horribly cheap and dirty when we came here. It’s nice to see a return of the clothe bag but it seems that all the ones that you can buy are poorly made. I wore out two Ryerson bags within a month of school. I would if it would be terribly tacky to bring out my immi-old school United Nations bags that can survive heavy lugging around. I also dislike buying used clothes but then I realized that it makes a difference of 0.01 tonnes so I’m not too worried about it. I obviously need banking services.

If I make those changes, my footprint would be 5.785. Since I usually don’t fly and I don’t make car purchases every year, my footprint would be 1.977. That is my goal.

This goal is very expensive. A new hybrid costs $22,600 which I can afford but not in parallel with saving for the purchase of a more centralized location for my home. My goal was to save $30,000 for a down payment by December. I don’t think that would be possible.