Leading in Print: Taking a Look at Carbon Footprint

A household carbon footprint refers to the overall amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated by all the energy and stuff consumed by those who live in a home as they go about their daily lives. It is a common measure of the contribution of a single household to climate change. Understanding your carbon footprint can show areas where you can decrease your energy consumption and, in turn, reduce your production of carbon emissions.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency suggests that the average American household produces 54,462 lbs CO2 each year from transportation, electricity, heating and waste production. The Cool Climate Network based at UC Berkeley took a more thorough look at American households and also included air travel, food consumption, services (such as health care, education and entertainment) and goods (such as clothing and personal items) in the household footprint calculation. They came up with an average household footprint of 96,000 lbs (48 tons) CO2 per year.

Where Does This CO2 Come From? 

The largest share comes from transportation and housing which make up 57,600 lbs CO2 or 60% of the total. That means that driving our cars, heating and/or cooling our homes and running appliances make up the major part of our household footprint. Food contributes another 15% with much of that a result of the large amount of energy required to produce meat. Goods and services each contribute 12.5% with entertainment, clothing and health care the main sources of CO2 in those categories.

And where might our paper consumption fit in? The Cool Climate Network has a category called “office and reading” which includes paper as one component. The whole category represents about 400 lbs of CO2 annually or 0.4% of total household CO2. Similar results were found in Finland where 0.9% of the overall climate impacts of household consumption were attributed to printed products.

Globally, the contribution of the pulp, paper and printing industries to the global greenhouse gas inventory is about 1%. In 2016, the pulp and paper industry in the U.S. was responsible for generating 37.7 million metric tons of CO2e in 2016 or only 0.5 % of the total U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of 6546.2 million metric tons. 

Print's Impact

Overall, print and paper products appear to make up 1% or less of our human carbon footprint. As a comparison, the ICT sector (i.e. computing and digital communications and technologies) GHG contribution is currently 2-3% and this is expected to double by 2020. 

Various calculations have been made to measure the carbon emissions of paper products throughout their life cycle. For example, the production, delivery, and disposal of a newspaper is said to generate about 0.49 lbs of CO2 and if you subscribe to a daily paper that works out to be 147 lbs of CO2 each year - roughly the equivalent of driving 186 miles. A National Geographic magazine generates 1.82 lbs CO2 during its life cycle. If you get one each month, that is similar to driving 24 miles annually. Paper towels generate about 0.06 lbs CO2 each and even if you use 10 each day, in a year your paper towels would general 219 lbs of CO2 or the equivalent of driving 173 miles. Considering that the average American drives 13,476 miles each year, the amount of CO2 generated by paper products is relatively small.

Overall reduced consumption is always a good idea to reduce our environmental footprint. If you really want to reduce your carbon footprint ride a bicycle or take the bus, eat vegetarian a couple of times per week, turn the thermostat down a few degrees in the winter and reduce your air conditioning use in the summer. It takes a just a few small conscious choices to make a big difference.