Carbon Footprint vs Climate Shadow

It’s easy to feel helpless, disempowered, and disillusioned when it comes to the enormity of the environmental crisis we face.

There you are, sipping vegan milk from a soggy straw while the richest 1% are flying around the world in their private jets and oil companies are extracting an average of 100 million barrels of oil from the planet every day.

It’s hard to connect our everyday lives with the destruction of Rainforests – at an estimated rate of 80,000 acres a day.

The enormity of it is overwhelming.

What difference can one person possibly make?

There is only so much we can do and that we can control as individuals, but if we all did something, no matter how small and imperfectly, it’s surprising how quickly small changes add up to big shifts.

“It’s only one disposable coffee cup”, said 7 million* people.

* (In the UK It is estimated that about 7 million disposable coffee cups are used daily).

Carbon Footprint

According to Mike Berners-Lee, a professor at Lancaster University, the Carbon Footprint of something is, “the sum total of all the greenhouse gas emissions that had to take place in order for a product to be produced or for an activity to take place.”

Our personal Carbon Footprint is the combined total of resources we consume as products or from our activities in a given time period, usually expressed as tonnes of carbon per year.

For consumers in the UK, these products and activities tend to be household energy use, transport, food, and the products and services we buy.

To start to understand and measure our personal impact we can use Carbon Calculators to estimate our personal Carbon Footprint. When you are your business, this can also mean the impact your business has.

Read our Carbon Calculator comparison blog <here> (link)

However, we all have a different impact, depending on our lifestyle and choices.

For example, a meat eater may not necessarily have a larger footprint than their vegan neighbour. If the meat eater works at home, shops locally and rarely travels but the vegan takes several international flights a year and eats a lot of ultra-processed foods, the vegan will have a larger carbon footprint.

Reducing our personal carbon footprints is also not always easy. For example, someone may not have access to public transport, or can’t afford to their car with an electric vehicle, or as a tenant, they have no control over the energy efficiency of their home.

The very richest in the world will have a far greater impact if they reduce their carbon footprint, as having more money usually leads to the consumption of more resources.

Acting by ourselves is inherently limiting and is just one small part of what is required to affect change in a system that, despite the best individual efforts, remains dominated by the production and use of fossil fuels.

We have greater power to affect change as a community. Our Climate Shadow can have a greater impact than individual actions alone.

Climate Shadow

What is your Climate Shadow? It’s not just your footprint, it’s the whole shadow behind those footsteps. Your Climate Shadow aims to paint a fuller picture of the sum of personal choices. It goes further than the products you buy and the food you eat. It also encompasses things like how you vote, how many children or pets you have, where you work, how you invest your money, and how ethical the businesses you work with are – but also how much you talk about climate change, and the resonance of your message.

Are you influencing others to make changes, too?

Are you sharing your progress as a business and influencing others to make small changes, too?

Conclusion

While reducing your Carbon Footprint is important – and measuring it so that you can change it – are all positive actions you can take as an individual and business – what more can you do?

Do something, anything, but then talk about it.

As a business are you talking the talk or walking the walk?