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Thursday, March 13, 2008
1:01 AM

Joey Wei

2A

12th March 2008

CARBON FOOTPRINT-How could we reduce it?

A carbon footprint is defined as the total amount of green house gases produced to directly and indirectly support human activities, usually expressed in equivalent tons of carbon dioxide(CO2). In other words, it means that when you drive a car, the engine burns fuel which creates a certain amount of CO2, depending on its fuel consumption and the driving distance. When you heat your house with oil, gas or coal, then you also generate CO2. Even if you heat your house with electricity, the generation of the electrical power may also have emitted a certain amount of CO2.
Carbon footprint is meant to be useful for individuals and organizations to conceptualize their personal (or organizational) impact in contributing to global warming. A conceptual tool in response to carbon footprints are carbon offsets, or the mitigation of carbon emissions through the development of alternative projects such as solar or wind energy or reforestation. A carbon footprint can be seen as a subset of earlier uses of the concept of ecological footprints.
The carbon footprint can be efficiently and effectively reduced by checking the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to accurately determine the current carbon footprint, identify the hot-spots in terms of energy consumption and associated CO2 emissions, optimisation of energy efficiency, thus, reduction of CO2 emissions and reduction of other GHG emissions contributed from production processes, identification of solutions to neutralise the CO2 emissions that cannot be eliminated by energy saving measures and lastly carbon offsetting; investment in projects that aim at the reducing CO2 emissions, for instance biofuels or tree planting activities.
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