Our Carbon Footprint: How Do Paper Products Fit In?

A household carbon footprint refers to the overall amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions generated by all the energy and materials consumed by those who live in a home as they go about their daily lives. It is a common measure of the contribution of a single household to climate change. Understanding your carbon footprint can show opportunities for decreasing your consumption of energy and materials, and in turn, reducing your production of carbon emissions.

By far the largest source of human-induced carbon emissions is the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, gasoline, diesel and natural gas. In GHG inventory and carbon footprint studies, the use of fossil fuels is usually the cause of elevated GHG emissions.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency suggests that the average American household produces 54,462 lbs CO2 each year from transportation, electricity, heating and waste production.[i] The Cool Climate Network[ii] based at UC Berkeley took a more thorough look at American households and also included air travel, food consumption, services (such as healthcare, education, and entertainment) and goods (such as clothing and personal items) in the household footprint calculation. They came up with an average household footprint of 96,000 lbs (48 tons) of CO2 per year (Figure 1).

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