Test Your Own Carbon Footprint & Find Out What Our Score Is

Have you ever wondered what your impact on the earth is? Take a carbon footprint test and find out. This site asks the best questions that can really give an accurate score. Taking a carbon footprint test can help you determine if and how you can reduce your impact on the earth by reducing your carbon emissions.

Our Score
We live in a 3 bedroom house with 2 adults and 2 children (the test only asks for adults though.) We have two cars and we have only flown once in the past 5 years but I said that we fly once a year because there was no option for once every 2 years. My husband never turns off his monitors or computers and we don’t unplug our appliances (i.e. stereos, etc.) Our score is 316 which is equivalent to 12 tons of carbon emissions. Wow! 12 tons! I can’t believe we use that much (but it would probably be lower if I didn’t choose the fly every year option because that made the number jump about 40 points.) The average score in America is 325; the average score in Canada is 306.

I ask my husband to turn off his computer and monitors all the time but I won’t win that one. I guess we’re doing pretty good considering that we also have two children in the house and we are here all day. My husband works from home so our home also runs an office. I’d love to use CFL lightbulbs but the curly ones don’t fit into some of our light fixtures because of the light covers and others they stick out the top…sorry, but I have to choose fashion over greeness on the light bulb subject.

Tell us how you’re doing on your carbon footprint score…

Update 8.6.09

We’ve moved to Eugene, Oregon since the last time I took the carbon footprint test and some things have changed. Our new score is 236 with 6.8 tons of carbon output. The average score here in Eugene is 270 while Oregon as a state has an average score of 284 and the U.S. is scoring 356 on average.

Some things that have changed for us:

We live in a neighborhood where walking and biking is more accessible for the things we do so we take advantage of that often, if not daily. We have also been composting and the opportunity to buy local is widely available so we of course take advantage of that opportunity. The heat in our house is electric which makes a big difference since electricity is a renewable resource where as gas is not so much.

Wow! carbon output was reduced by nearly half simply by living in a larger metropolus that offers local vendors.