What is my carbon footprint?
We use a figure of 12 tonnes per year for an individual's carbon footprint.
You will, no doubt, have seen many references to carbon footprint. It's likely none of the numbers will have been the same as there are many different ways of measuring carbon footprint. For instance, the UK government's annual carbon emissions report cites four measures ranging from about 5.5 tonnes per person per year up to about 12.5 tonnes per person per year.
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The differences arise principally from whether the figures measure only emissions in the UK, or include all emissions associated with activities in the UK, including imports and aviation.
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A figure of c. 10.6 tonnes captures the carbon footprint of a typical individual's consumption. based on ONS figures examined by the excellent team at CarbonBrief.org and we feel this is a sensible benchmark.
We choose to add a bit extra in our assessments. We're ultimately more concerned with direction of travel than attempting to measure precisely carbon emissions based on the imprecise recall and expressed intentions of conducting our daily lives.
What is my plastic footprint?
We target your plastic footprint at about 40 kgs of plastic per year.
40kgs of plastic is about 2,000 plastic bottles.
This figure accounts for your consumption of plastic bottles, rigid plastic packaging and plastic film.
As with carbon footprint estimates there are many estimates ranging from 22kg per person (Recoup 2020) all the way up to more than 50kg per person.