Resources for Sustainability: Measuring Your Environmental Footprint Provides Perspective on Sustainable Actions

From electricity generation profiles to carbon footprint calculators, assessing one’s sustainability impact on communities is part of recognizing consequences and developing solutions.

Like many other concepts, sustainability exists on a scale. As sources and quantities of pollution increase, so do the negative impacts on communities’ Triple Bottom Line. Likewise, increasing the applications of sustainable initiatives allows for more comprehensive measures to generate renewable resources and safeguard against problems.

An informative step towards building sustainability initiatives is measuring how one impacts the environment. From family households to states and countries of millions of consumers, recognizing the scale of one’s impact provides perspective on the benefits of implementing solutions.

This entry in Team Gemini’s ongoing “Resources for Sustainability” series will highlight a selection of tools from our Resources compilation to help measure environmental footprints, whether from an individual, business, or community perspective. Resources vary from maps and calculators to Excel and PDF files.

Topic areas include a range related to footprint assessments, including:

• Carbon Footprint: Provides insight into one of the more common greenhouse-gas contributors—CO₂—and how its impacts can be translated into everyday terms.
• State Performance: Presents national and state averages for energy consumption and expenditures.
• Individual Impact: Geared towards information for individuals, these entries focus on an overview of personal impacts on the environment.

The following are some of the notable resources we’ve discovered. Feel free to explore more on our Resources page, or contact us if you’d like to recommend others.

Featured Resources

Tool	Topic	Description	Accessibility
Carbon Footprint Calculator	Carbon Footprint	Do you know what your carbon footprint is? Try EPA’s Household Carbon Footprint Calculator to estimate your annual greenhouse gas emissions.	Advanced
Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator	Carbon Footprint	This calculator may be useful in communicating your greenhouse gas reduction strategy, reduction targets, or other initiatives aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.	Easy
Power Profiler	Carbon Footprint	Compare the fuel mix and air emissions rates of the electricity in your region to the national average. Determine the air emissions impacts of electricity use in your home or business.	Easy
Vehicle Cost Calculator	Individual Impact	This tool uses basic information about your driving habits to calculate total cost of ownership and emissions for makes and models of most vehicles, including alternative fuel and advanced technology vehicles.	Easy
How Much Energy Do You Use?	State Performance	See how much energy someone like you used in 2012.	Easy
How Much Do You Spend On Energy?	State Performance	See per capita expenditure on energy in 2012.	Easy

For a full listing of Team Gemini sustainability tools and resources, please visit our resources page at http://teamgemini.us/resources/.