Why Is Knowing Your Carbon Footprint Important?

Many of us cruise through our daily lives completely oblivious to such things as a carbon footprint and the impact we are having to the growing problem of greenhouse gases and the whole global warming crisis. This isn’t surprising, it’s just a fact of life that there are many distractions that take place and we take for granted the imprint we are leaving on the world, just by living.

Our multiple digital clocks run in our houses 24 hours a day – we’ve got one on the microwave, one on the conventional oven, one on the CD player, one on the stereo and one in each of our three bedrooms, all of them drawing passive energy and we don’t even give it a thought. It’s just one of the assumed “rights” of living in a modern affluent society, we may not use it but we don’t mind paying for it regardless. Some people might be a little bit shocked if they were to find out exactly how much carbon emissions they are producing per year, not to mention an indication of how much it’s costing them and how simple it might be to save a few bucks and the environment at the same time.

You Can’t Change What You Don’t Know

I like that sentence, it neatly sums up a whole range of human instincts and precisely describes one of the roadblocks in front of those trying to educate people on the importance of reducing our carbon footprint. It’s only when someone is shown the consequence for the actions of their daily lives that they can begin to grasp the idea that there is a need for change.

It’s not until you’re told that running your car produces around 2 ½ tonnes of carbon dioxide per year that you begin to realise that this could be a problem. It also allows you to then set a goal to lower your number for the next year. Suddenly you have a goal – a quantifiable goal – that you can set for yourself and aim for with real purpose. Without the calculation of your carbon footprint you would be resigned to stating that you produce some (or a lot of) carbon dioxide. Trying to produce less in the future would be next to impossible to gauge.

The fact that there is also a corresponding cost benefit i.e. you save money! to reducing your carbon footprint size should have people flocking to the cause. The word will continue to leak out while, hopefully, carbon dioxide doesn’t.