Anti Essays :: Free Essay on "Carbon Food Print"
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Submitted by nabendu on October 29, 2008
Carbon foot print
The carbon footprint is a measure of the exclusive global amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted by a human activity or accumulated over the full life cycle of a product or service
The life cycle concept of the carbon footprint means that it is all-encompassing and includes all possible causes that give rise to carbon emissions. In other words, all direct and indirect emissions need to be taken into account. Even if you heat your house with electricity, the generation of the electrical power may also have emitted a certain amount of CO2. When you buy food and goods, the production of the food and goods also emitted some quantities of CO2.
Normally, a carbon footprint is expressed as a CO2 equivalent(usually in kilograms or tonnes), which accounts for the sameglobal warming effects of different greenhouse gases . Carbon footprints can be calculated using a Life Cycle Assessment method, or can be restricted to the immediately attributable emissions from energy use of fossil fuels. In both cases however, as the term usually indicates the amount of emissions generated through the actions of people, what is important is not only the total amount of energy use, but also how the energy was produced in the first place.
An alternative definition of the carbon footprint is the total amount of carbon dioxide attributable to the actions of an individual over a period of one year. This definition underlies the personal carbon calculations. The term owes its origins to the idea that a footprint is what has been left behind as a result of the individual's activities. Bottom-up calculations sum attributable CO2 emissions from individual actions; top-down calculations take total emissions from a country and divide these emissions among the residents .
A carbon footprint is made up of the sum of two parts, the primary footprint (shown by the green slices of the pie chart) and the secondary...
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