Calculating Your Carbon Footprint

Because you have asked, our staff have investigated various carbon footprint calculators currently available online to recommend one that is easy to use and based on best available science. There are many good ones, but to simplify things, we have picked only one to share, from the US EPA, the USEPA Household Carbon Footprint Calculator
This Web site helps calculate carbon emissions produced as an individual, at home, on the road or as a household. Suggestions for reducing carbon emissions are given at the end of the calculation.

Last year, during our annual tree and fish sale, we wrote in Frankly Speaking about the value of trees for carbon sequestration. Again, because of your feedback, we are providing a resource for more information: the National Tree Benefit Calculator (developed by Davey Tree Expert Co. and Casey Trees).

This Web site gives storm water, carbon, energy, air quality, property value and overall benefits per species of tree based on its size.

One example of Franklin Soil and Water’s carbon savings during the annual tree sale:

1. In 2011, we sold 2,950 eastern white pine trees at our annual spring sale (not to mention tens of thousands seedlings of other species.) If half of those eastern white pine trees live to be 25 years old, they will cumulatively reduce carbon dioxide by 1,050,200 lbs. Conservation seedlings have an average of 50% survivability.
2. The US EPA estimates that the average household of two people emits 41,500 lbs of carbon dioxide per year.
3. In the first five years, with half of those eastern white pines surviving, carbon reduced will be 29,500 lbs. Between years six and seven, with half of those trees surviving, the carbon emissions from an average US household of two can be offset. (The amount of carbon taken in by the trees increases by different factors each year due to the tree’s growth and diameter at breast height of the tree.)
4. A staff member at Franklin Soil and Water with a two-person household emits 22,886 lbs of carbon annually. Between years five and six, with half of the eastern white pines still growing, their carbon emissions would be offset.