Calculate your carbon footprint. To calculate your emissions, first complete the blank Personal Quantity column as described above. Your yearly residential utilities usage can be found on you or your parents utility bills. If your information is not available, use the data listed in the Typical Quantity column.

Then for each activity, calculate your annual consumption (using the units specified in the Units Per Year column), and multiply your annual consumption by the associated number in the Multiplier column to obtain an estimate of the pounds of CO₂resulting from that activity, which you will enter in the Emissions column. Finally, add the numbers in that column to find your carbon footprint, and express the final CO₂result in both pounds and tons (1 ton = 2,000 lbs) and in kilograms and metric tons (1 kilogram = 2.2 pounds; 1 metric ton = 1.1 tons).

	Units per Year	Personal Quantity per Year	Typical Quantity per Year	Multiplier	Emissions per Year (lbs CO2)
Residential Utilities
Electricity	kwh		4,500	1.5
Heating Oil	gallons		37	22
Natural Gas	hundreds of cubic feet		400	12
Propane	gallons		8	13
Coal	tons			4,200
Transportation
Automobiles	gallons		600	19
Air travel	miles		2,000	0.6
Bus (urban)	miles		12	0.07
Bus (intercity)	miles		0	0.2
Rail or subway	miles		28	0.6
Taxi or Limo	miles		2	1
other motor fuel	gallons		9	22
Household Waste
Trash	pounds		780	0.75
Recycled Items	pounds		337	-2
	Total (pounds)
Total (tons)
Total (kilograms)
Total (metric tons)

1. How does your carbon footprint above compare to the per capita U.S. average of 19.6 metric tons (21.6 tons) of CO₂per person per year?

2. List three important ways or actions you could take to reduce your carbon footprint by 20%.