Features / Knowledgebase

CUTTING THE CARBON

Your Carbon Footprint and how to compensate for it

Your carbon footprint measures your personal CO2 emissions (including other greenhouse gases measure in units of CO2). Although there are many activities that result in a higher carbon footprint(eating meat for example), electricity generation and transport related activities account to more than 50% of the increase of greenhouse gases. With greater prosperity resulting in driving more/bigger cars/SUV’s for longer distances and longer air travel for business and leisure etc., greenhouse gasses are on the increase at an alarming rate. Although in the long term the solution lies in consuming less, using more public transport and switching, as far as possible, to renewable technologies for producing power such as hydro, geothermal, solar and wind energy etc., it is possible to mitigate the personal and institutional impact through planting trees. Another (of the many) advantage of planting trees is that they intercept large quantities of water from the atmosphere as rain- 10,000 mature trees bring down 35-40 million litres of water so for every tree you plant you are making available 35-40 litres of rainfall!

We give below a table which shows the number of trees to be planted to mitigate the impact of air and road travel. As a general rule 5 full grown Neem trees will absorb 1 metric ton of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). The number of trees are rounded to the nearest figure.

The table is based upon return trips from New Delhi and back in kms/No of trees needed to mitigate carbon impact-

Mumbai- 2814/4
Pune- 2834/4
Chennai- 4190/5
Kolkata- 2922/4
Bangaluru- 2160/2
Thiruvantapuram-4464/6
Amritsar- 894/2
Srinagar-1752/4
Gangtok- 3196/6
Thimpu-
Dhaka- 2852/4
Yangon-4686/7
Colombo-2423/4
Kathmandu-
Male- 5478/

Washington- 24,082/36
New York- 23,546/35
Los Angeles- 25,750/39
London – 13,442/20
Dublin- 14,178/21
Paris-13,198/20
Berlin- 11,580/17
Frankfurt- 12,250/18
Amsterdam- 12,672/19
Brussels- 12,846/18
Vienna- 11,146/16
Warsaw-10,540/16
Zurich- 12,328/18
Moscow- 11,430/13
Prague- 11,430/17
Warsaw- 10,540/16
Bucharest- 9624/15
Copenhagen- 11,708/18
Stockholm-11,158/17
Helsinki- 10,444/16
Oslo- 11,984/18
Madrid- 14,564/22
Lisbon- 14,580/23
Rome- 11,856/18
Istanbul- 9118/14
Riyadh- 6120/9
Dubai-4408/7
Abu Dhabi-4640/7
Kuwait-5684/14
Muscat- 3884/6
Doha-5148/8
Bahrain-5284/8
Baghdad- 6326/10
Tehran- 5094/7
Jerusalam-8070/12
Tokyo- 7264/17
Shanghai- 8500/12
Beijing- 7560/18
Hong Kong-7530/18
Seoul-9382/14-15
Singapore-8290/12
Jakarta- 9980/15
Taipeh- 8788/14
Kula Lumpur- 7668/19
Bangkok- 5720/14
Pnom Phen- 4278/10
Manila- 5914/14

Australia/NZ

Sydney- 20,832/31
Edmonton- 21,674/32

Africa

Cairo- 8878/13
Casablanca- 15,746/24
Lagos-16202/24
Nairobi-10,868/16
Johannesburg- 16,060/24