Surprises about what makes up most carbon emissions in our household

I thought I knew our carbon footprint pretty well. All the things we do that add temperature warming gases to the atmosphere. But when you assess it in detail, there are a few surprises.

In the last couple of days I used the carbon footprint calculator from Carbon Neutral to look into our lifestyle. It uses Australian estimates and you select your location to get accurate information. For example, living in South Australia we are rich in renewable electricity, so using electricity is better than other places. As I said in my last post, my two-person household causes 16 tonnes of carbon dioxide (or other greenhouse gases) to make their way into the air each year.

In 2020, six Australian families confronted the same reality as me. In the Fight for Planet A documentary their annual carbon footprints ranged from 22 to 41 tonnes per year. What struck me was how they all had a different challenge. Each household was at a different stage of life, and had different types of homes. It also meant different transport and travel needs, and different diets. You can see more about them here. There are some common lessons and the ‘prescription’ varied so much between families. It relies on both common actions and personal actions to have a chance of reducing emissions by 50% .

So, back to our house. Let’s start with where we are doing well. We live and work in the city of Adelaide and do lots of walk commuting. Our car only travels about 5,000 kilometres in a year. Hardly a surprise that vehicle emissions are only 4% (0.7 tonnes) of our footprint.

Our apartment is in a well-insulated block where we adjust the thermostat for ‘not too cool’ in summer and ‘not too warm’ in winter. Even though I work from home, our home electricity usage amounts to 1.8 tonnes (11% of our footprint). Plus, gas is only used to heat our water — gas and water together are 0.4 tonnes. And waste is another 0.4 tonnes. That’s all the categories except two, and only 20% of our emissions or 6.6 tonnes.

Now for the not-so-good news. We aim to travel to Canada each year to visit my partner’s family. After we add a few interstate trips for arts, sports and food we like, our emissions jump up by 5.8 tonnes, or 36% of our footprint.

The most surprising part is what we eat. Our meat intake is average to a little below, though we also enjoy quite a few dairy products. When we measure the food and drinks we prepare at home and eat out, that’s our biggest impact: 6.9 tonnes is 43% of our footprint.

Now I’m faced with a challenge to figure out how we cut our 16 tonnes of emissions by 50%. Knowing that most of the change needs to happen in only two categories, we need to be smart to hit our target.

In the next post I’ll dive into what I’m thinking we can change first.