5B) Calculating your own emissions

Today, let’s focus on you. Although I used ICAO’s CO2 emissions calculator in my last post, I recommend visiting this website because it allows you to include ‘radiative forcings’ (those non-CO2 effects I explained last week). The impact of that return flight between Heathrow and LA was double when accounting for contrails and other pollutants like NOx and ozone!

Now compare the emissions from your flights in the past year to the per capita CO2 emissions of your country. Take the UK, where the average person emitted 5.81 tonnes in 2017. Now can you see how much flying contributes to your carbon emissions?

Calculating your carbon footprint from flying (Source: Carbon Footprint Calculator)