Discover the Size of Your Carbon Footprint

The U.S health-care debate may be centered around money, but researchers at the University of Chicago recently published a research letter in the Journal of the American Medical Association looking at a different kind of cost: the carbon footprint of our massive health care system. Unsurprisingly, health care has a doozy of a footprint--it's responsible for 8% of all CO2 emissions in the country. So where is all that CO2 coming from? Mostly...  

ATLANTA, Nov. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- SYNLawn (www.SYNLawn.com), the industry innovator on synthetic grass, empowers consumers to reduce their carbon footprint by completely eliminating the need to water lawns, use harmful fertilizers and pesticides, or operate gas powered lawn mowers that increase air pollution. Over the past five years, the amount of synthetic grass sold and installed by the company has conserved 4.7 billion gallons of water and...  

Happy Thursday, TreeHuggers. Everyone knows that America spends a ton of money on health care. But it turns out we spend a lot of fossil fuels on it, too. In fact, a recent study found that a full 8 percent of our carbon emissions come from health-care-related sources. Hospitals are the biggest culprits, followed by the pharmaceutical industry. Also on our radar this week: California's water woes. Roll over, John Steinbeck. Drought and...  

FMCG major Hindustan Unilever (HUL) today said it has fixed a target of 25 per cent reduction in carbon footprint by 2012. "We are very committed towards environment sustainability. HUL and its parent company Unilever both have fixed a target of 25 per cent reduction in carbon footprint, taking 2004 as the base level by 2012," HUL CEO Nitin Paranjpe told reporters on the sidelines of India Economic Summit.  

Are dogs worse for the environment than SUVs? You'll find a number of sources trumpeting the widely publicized results concluding that yes, dogs are worse for the planet than SUVs. But don't kick out the hound quite yet and head for the Hummer dealership.  

Holiday shopping can leave a carbon footprint as big as the North Pole. The excesses of the holidays - eating, drinking, traveling and giving - add 650 kg of carbon dioxide per person, making up 5.5 percent of our total......  

When the Met Office's latest £30m supercomputer was switched on in May it drew a fair amount of criticism, and a cloud of suspicion has hung over the organisation's Exeter-based headquarters ever since. Isn't it odd, critics asked, that an instrument for combating climate change has such a huge carbon footprint?  

The World is saved! Asus announced today that the Asus N51V notebook computer is the world's first notebook to receive both Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) and carbon footprint (PAS 2050:2008) certificates. ASUS is the first Taiwanese IT manuf...  

PepsiCo, which has been calculating the carbon footprint of its Walkers Crisps potato chips in the UK since 2007, revealed some of the secrets behind its methodology in a recent article at MarketingMagazine. Martyn Seal, Sustainability Director of PepsiCo Europe, said that the carbon footprint must include all steps of the supply chain to be effective. PepsiCo [...]  

Lately I have been traveling a lot for work. This has made me seriously consider buying offsets for these trips. I know that it is better to not travel at all, but outside of quitting my job I can't get around it. I have considered spending money on projects around the house to lessen my footprint, but using a carbon offset seems to give you more bang for the buck. My question is, are these offsets really helping or should I save my money for...  

City looks to Ecuador to cut 'carbon footprint'San Diego Union TribuneSolana Beach city officials are seeking to preserve a tropical forest 3500 miles away, as part of an effort to lessen the city's effect on ...  

According to a recent study released by NAVTEQ, the average U.S. driver that uses a GPS system with real-time traffic updates is able to cut nearly 4 days off of their annual commute as well as decrease their carbon footprint by over 21%. Both of these data points should be reason enough for you to [...]  

tags: Earth Overshoot Day, environment, education [larger view] Today is Earth Overshoot Day. This is the day when humanity will have placed more demand on the planet's resources -- from filtering CO2 to producing food, fiber and timber -- than the planet can provide in this year. From this day forward until the end of the year, people will meet our demand for ecological services by depleting resource stocks and accumulating carbon...  

You have an empty bottle in hand and you re going to get rid of it. But where exactly do you plan on sending it? Every day, students make decisions about what they do with what they re finished using. But conservationists at the University have taken efforts to decrease the size of SVSU s carbon footprint, including increased recycling and a program to use food waste. Josh Webb, purchasing manager of the SVSU Office of Business Services...  

Below, I provide you with a photo of a 7 foot dog. He will play for the LA Clippers this year. This picture got me thinking. I live in Westwood, Los Angeles. Here we have a suburban housing stock but most of the homes have no children living there. Instead, there are some adults and a large number of pets. Economists talk about equivalence scales. What is the carbon footprint of a 7 foot dog? As we introduce carbon pricing, will pet...