Carbon Footprint calculator

One of the first things you might need to do it to calculate your carbon footprint mainly in order to offset it by perhaps planting trees.

You can try this Carbon Footprint simple calculator from the UK government. My carbon footprint for my small modest home came out at 2.58 tonnes per year. What's yours?

The calculator is really simple to use, you don't need to know every last detail about every appliance or house, if you do it can be more accurate, if you don't it will still give you a good estimate.

The CO2 emitted by my appliances, again quite modest was 0.53 tonnes. My CO2 transport cost was negligible as I tend to use public transport.

Which meant my total footprint each year was 3.04 tonnes

Now if you want to offset that you can check out the figures from the woodland trust.

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How many trees do you need to plant to offset 1 tonne of carbon dioxide?
Using very conservative values the Woodland Trust will need to plant and care for 5 trees over a 75 - 100 year period to offset 1 tonne of carbon dioxide. To clarify 18 trees would need to be planted to offset 1 tonne of Carbon, as opposed to 5 trees for 1 tonne of CO2.
In the last 10 years the Woodland Trust has planted over 6 million trees which will offset about 1.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

- Woodland Trust, UK
NB there is a mistake in the original document
where a line is split, I have corrected it to how
I believe it should be written.

For each ton of CO2 you need to plant five trees which mean I should plant 16 trees a year to be safe which will approximately cost £10 each so totalling £160. Hmm offsetting is a lot harder than you think, but if you look at it on a monthly basis its only £13.33 a month.