Tuesday 30 September 2008

How green can you get?

Website helps consumers calculate and reduce their carbon footprint,

Nareerat Wiriyapong

Want to make the world a more pleasant place with fewer greenhouse gases? Just eating less meat or buying products made closer to home would help.

For those who think growing fruits and vegetables for your own meals requires a bit of work, how about avoiding out-of-season foods at the supermarket?

These are tips from experts for individuals, businesses and organisations to cut carbon footprint - a measure of the impact human activities have on the environment and, of course, climate change.

Measured in tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent, carbon footprint relates to greenhouse gases produced in daily life through burning fuels in everyday activities.

For example, driving a car, heating or cooling a home or an office and taking a holiday flight all consume energy and produce CO2 emissions.

The website carbonfootprint.com offers good general information about carbon footprints. For instance, electricity is one of the biggest producers of carbon emissions. Each cup of coffee and every moment at a computer worsens global warming.

The website also features an online calculator to tally the amounts of carbon that different lifestyles generate, as well as recommendations for reducing or offsetting these amounts.

Taking a direct return flight from Bangkok to Melbourne is an example. The emission for one passenger for flying 14,745 kilometres totalled 1.697 tonnes of CO2.

Techa Boonyachai, vice-chairman of the Thai National Shippers' Council, said he first viewed the website three weeks ago and found the tips from carbon footprint experts interesting and also beneficial to his business operations.

Mr Techa, while acknowledging that avoiding CO2 emissions completely was hardly possible, has started to apply recommendations from the website to his daily activities.

"I tend to eat white meat rather than red meat as I found that cows' digestion produces lots of methane, which has carbon content 21 times higher than CO2," he said.

Driving his Toyota Camry 20,000 km a year means about three tonnes of CO2, prompting him to try to cycle more during holidays. "I am calculating the difference in carbon emission between driving and taking a domestic flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. And then I can choose whether to fly or drive there for my next trip," he said.

For a business, Mr Techa said that reducing carbon emissions or simply cutting waste from operations can cut costs while helping reduce the planet's environmental problems.

In addition, reducing greenhouse gas emissions can generate carbon credits for Thai companies to sell in international markets to earn extra income, he said.

The website suggests that everyone can offset or neutralise emissions by buying credits from certified emission reduction projects that prevent or remove an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide elsewhere in the world.

Its own Clean Energy Fund is another option for carbon offsetting. The fund supports carbon reduction projects that reduce emissions through replacing fossil fuels with clean and renewable energy generation.

Money can also be pledged to combat deforestation in Kenya, said the website, as trees breathe in CO2 and exhale oxygen. It adds that starting with $39.13 to pledge three trees can cut about 2.19 tonnes of emissions.