How to Determine the Carbon Footprint at Work

A carbon footprint is a measure of the greenhouse gases that your activities produce. These greenhouse gases contribute to climate change and are measured in carbon dioxide units. Many environment-conscious businesses nowadays want to keep track of their carbon footprints so that they can offset the greenhouse gases that they produce. There are a number of online carbon calculators, including those found on the websites of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Carbonfund, a carbon accounting firm. These websites give you a sense of what kinds of business activities are included in carbon footprint accounting and make it relatively easy to calculate your office's carbon footprint.

Instructions

• 1

  Do a comprehensive inventory of your work activities over a period of time (such as a fiscal year) to collect the data necessary to input into the carbon footprint calculator of your choice. These activities can include business travel, utility use, paper and other office supply use and daily commute.

• 2

  Download carbon calculator spreadsheets, developed by the World Resources Institute, from the Clean Air-Cool Planet website. There are separate spreadsheets for calculating carbon emissions from utilities, long-distance travel, daily commuting and paper use in the office. Fill out these worksheets to get a comprehensive estimate of your carbon footprint.

• 3

  Enter your data for work travel, utilities and commuting into online carbon calculators from the Environmental Protection Agency and Carbonfund to get additional estimates of your carbon footprint. Since these estimates are not exact, you can average the outputs from different carbon calculators to get a more accurate number. You can now use this information to reduce or offset your footprint by investing in environmental conservation and tree planting programs that sequester carbon.