The carbon footprint assignment
Your Earth needs you & what can I do
By Roger Howard Taylor
Climate Change - Reduce Your Carbon Footprint
This short assignment is aimed at what can “I” do to reduce green house gas in your
daily living and focuses on the relationship between fossil fuel and global warming.
If you are going to make a significant difference to your energy use and greenhouse
gas emissions, then considering your Carbon footprint is a good starting point.
Energy and global warming
Generally homes use more fossil fuel than any other kind of energy resource. This
includes coal and gas for our electricity, oil for transport fuels and natural gas/oil for
heating. All so energy it takes to make all the goods and services we buy.
In the global carbon cycle, above, animals exhale carbon dioxide, which enters the
atmosphere.
Plants use sunlight to take this carbon dioxide to turn it into oxygen and vegetable
matter rich in carbon.
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by 25% in the last century and is
currently higher than at any stage in almost a million years.
With the release of this carbon dioxide, the temperature of the atmosphere and
ocean has increased by around 0.7 degrees C, with the result that snow and polar
ice are melting and the sea level is rising. Rainfall patterns may be changing as well.
The warming has been more rapid than scientists would expect due to natural
causes alone. It is being driven by changes in the make-up of global atmosphere as a
consequence of everyday activities such as heating and cooling our homes,
manufacturing the things we buy and producing the food we eat.
What can we do?
There’s no avoiding some changes to our climate, and we have to adapt how we produce food,
use water, build and look after our natural environment. We can avoid the worst case global
warming projections and dangerous impacts they would bring.
The most important thing we can do as part of a global effort is to reduce carbon dioxide
emissions. To this we need to burn less fossil fuel, conserve the resources we use for the goods we
buy and reduce land clearing.
Every time we turn the radiators up in our homes, drive in our cars or turn the lights, we are
contributing to greenhouse emissions.
Your Carbon footprint
Our Carbon footprint is a measure of the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions, particularly
carbon dioxide, caused by our daily activities, for example:
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Using energy at home and for transport
Producing the food we eat and goods and services we use
Disposing of waste products
There is a direct link between using energy and resources carefully and reducing our greenhouse
gas emissions. You can use this “carbon footprint” to measure your success at saving energy,
recourses and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The smaller the footprint the better
Are all greenhouse gases equal?
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Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most abundant greenhouse gas
Other greenhouse gases, methane, ozone, nitrous oxide, and fluorocarbons
Even though we send far more CO2 into the atmosphere than any of these other gases, they are
still extremely powerful global warming agents.
Fluorocarbons can be many thousands of times more potent than the same volume of CO2 in
warming the atmosphere.
Rather than listing them all, scientists calculate for each greenhouse gas how much carbon dioxide
it would take to produce the same amount of warming. This equivalent amount of carbon dioxide
is called CO2-e, where the e stands for equivalent.
Visualizing CO2-e
Traditionally, scientists measure CO2-e by its mass, in kilograms or tones. It is easy to understand
what is meant by a kilogram of potatoes
What does a kilogram of CO2 look like?
Each group blow up your garbage plastic bag, like in the photo above, each bag contains 100
grams of greenhouse gas, CO2.
For example, a household of three people could easily produce enough CO2-e in a year to fill
500,000 garbage bags.
We can now use the following rules of thumb:
 10 garbage bags of CO2-e have a mass of about one kilogram
 10 garbage bags of CO2-e are produced from a kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electrical energy
use.
 Our electricity bills are measured in kWh and switching on a 100 watt light for 10 hours
would use one kWh.
 6 garbage bags of CO2-e are produced from using 10 mega joules (MJ) of natural gas. Our
gas bills can be measured in MJ and using gas to heat water for a shower would use about
four MJ.
 24 garbage bags of CO2-e are produced by using a liter of petrol
 5 garbage bags of CO2-e are produced for every 5 Danish kroner’s we spend on household
goods such as appliances (washing machines etc.), clothing, home maintenance or services
ranging from health care etc.
 45,000 garbage bags of CO2-e for food, adds to a person’s footprint.
 24 garbage bags of CO2-e are produced by using a liter of petrol.
The assignment
Form groups of 3 or 4 persons. (Different nationalities)
Read and discus the assignment together.
Your group has bought a house with a large garden.
You all plan to live a green life together in the suburbs of Reims, France.
You are all single and you work/study in the centre of Reims, approx. 10 km distance.
Your house is heated by electricity and you have an open wood fire in the living room.
You have two cars between you, which run on petrol.
You all have relatives abroad that you want to visit two times a year.
Assignment 1
Calculate your group’s yearly CO2-e carbon footprint in garbage bags. (Use example of emissions
worksheet figures, to help you calculate)
Important the currency used in the worksheet, are Australian Dollars.
Assignment 2
Discus on how to reduce your CO2-e emissions in your group and make a poster.
Evaluation
Each group presents their poster to the workshop.