We‘re delighted to see good, early enthusiasm for our new carbon footprint calculators that were launched in early March 2021. Since then, they’ve already been used by 50 households and 10 businesses. You can find the calculators on our website here. They are available to use, for free, across Cumbria and Lancashire. One is for households and one is for businesses, both based on the same model.
Measuring your carbon footprint is a great way of understanding the size of your environmental impact, specifically, how much greenhouse gas you are emitting from your daily activities or from your business. What’s even more useful is to understand the relative impacts of different activities, for example, do most of your emissions come from the food you eat, the car you drive or the way you power your house?
Our calculators allow you to enter data against each of these areas, and many more, so you can find the answers to these questions. All you need to do before starting is gather some information, such as how much electricity you have used and how many miles you have travelled in different modes of transport. The calculator is then easy to follow and ends with a results page that gives you the information you need to prioritise where to start cutting emissions.
The beauty of the calculator is that it also allows you to experiment. If you are considering reducing the amount of meat on your menus, for example, you can change your inputs and see how much carbon you save. You might also want to look at the impact of taking less flights or switching to electric cars.
Your data is saved. This means that you can revisit it the following year and remeasure your emissions to see if you have managed to reduce your footprint. This is particularly useful if you have a specific target for the reduction that you have committed to achieve.
Our dedicated webpage gives instructions and video tutorials on how to use the calculators. But calculating is just the first step – on our other pages you will find advice on how to reduce your carbon emissions, and our events page is constantly updated with new support sessions.
The carbon footprint calculators have been funded by South Lakeland District Council and developed by Carbon Footprint Ltd. CAfS was supported in the development phase by Ambleside Action for a Future, who are promoting the use of the calculators in their community.