EvoEnergy helps its customers reduce their cost of energy and importantly the amount of carbon dioxide their activities produce. All business need to reduce their costs and we are all aware of the need to reduce our carbon footprint. When I talk to clients they focus on the corporate aspects of carbon reduction; the demand of employees and customers that business plays their part in saving the planet, the stick that government may use to encourage the country to achieve its statutory carbon targets and team building around a common cause. However, very few appreciate just how much carbon dioxide they produce.
Government regularly produce conversion factors for fuel, gas and electricity to allow easy conversion from one unit to an equivalent mass of carbon dioxide. This conversion factor is known as kg CO₂e which for electricity is 0.28307 kg / kWh. This still does not mean very much until we relate it to everyday activities and then relate it to how many trees are needed to absorb this amount of carbon dioxide.
Activity | CO₂e | How many Mars bars (51g) | Volume of Carbon dioxide in no of people | Number of days for a tree to absorb this much carbon dioxide |
| Watching the entire “Body Guard” box set | 0.102 kg | 2 bars | 56 people | 1.7 days |
| Boiling a kettle for ten minutes | 0.14 kg | 3 bars | 77 people | 2.3 days |
| Two hours ironing | 0.623 kg | 12 bars | 339 people | 10.3 days |
| Average consumption of a UK home | 3.11 kg | 61 bars | 1,697 people | 51.7 days |
| Driving a petrol executive car 10 miles | 3.85 kg | 76 bars | 2,100 people | 64 days |
Flying from London to Paris (per person) | 65 kg | 1,275 bars | 35,425 people | 1,078 days |
These simple calculations show just how important it is to reduce our carbon footprint. If watching six hours of television takes a tree nearly two days to process the amount of carbon dioxide that you release then is it any wonder that our environment is struggling to cope with our modern way of living!
There are many ways to calculate your carbon footprint that enables you to understand how much carbon dioxide you generate in a lifetime and just how hard our environment needs to work to cope with your life then we stand a chance to make enough of a difference to give our children a chance.