Dr Bruce Manners
Senior minister
Avondale College Seventh-day Adventist Church
How big is your carbon footprint? Your carbon footprint is the measure of greenhouse gases you produce through lifestyle and consumption given as an equivalent of carbon dioxide.
It’s like when you walk along the beach you can turn around and see the footprints you leave there. In the same way, you can tell what carbon impact you have on our planet.
You can calculate your footprint. On www.carbonfootprint.com you’ll find the “typical” person’s carbon footprint in the developed world is formed in various ways. About 27 per cent of the footprint comes from home utilities use (electricity etc); 14 per cent from recreation and leisure activities; and 10 per cent from private transport.
The problem with these kinds of figures is you could come to the conclusion you can best help the environment by being dead. Not only would you then be producing no greenhouse gases, you’d be adding compost value of the soil.
There are suggestions about lowering your carbon footprint: use low-energy light bulbs; recycle; and, of course, when you get married, instead of getting 10 toasters from random people, ask all guests to pay to plant trees.
I like the footprint idea and can see how it could be developed into other areas. It’s about the impact you have on our planet. What if we asked questions like, “What kind of service am I performing in our community?” or, “How do I rate at treating others fairly?” or, “How willing am I to lend a hand when needed?”
It comes back to this: How big is my caring footprint?
The difference between a caring footprint and the carbon footprint is that we’d want a big caring footprint.
Perhaps its time to set up a website. Let’s call it www.carefootprint.com. What would you list on it to help increase this footprint?
PS: It’s too late! I finished writing this and checked the web. The site is already running. It directs you to dental services.
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