Conscious about carbon footprint? Log on to the net

Do you know that you may be unknowingly guilty of a large carbon footprint? If you use a car to commute and are its only occupant, cannot spend a minute without air-conditioning at home, need the geyser even during summer, use the washing machine for just three pieces of clothing, leave the lights on, or do a myriad other things that guzzle power, you have accumulated a massive carbon footprint. In other words, your contribution to environmental damage is substantial to add to a multiplier effect.

But help is a click away if you are feeling guilty. A Mumbai-based NGO Environmental Management Centre (EMC) has designed a carbon footprint calculator specifically for Mumbai. Available on the website emcentre.com/know2CO2no w, it gives you the amount of carbon emission you are responsible for every day.

Carbon footprint-calculating websites are not new, as googling the phrase will show. But those sites, created in developed countries, do not return correct footprint estimates for a city like Mumbai. “Every city has its unique carbon footprint pattern, and a calculator cannot be one-size-fits-all,” said Swati Arunprasad, senior environmental specialist, EMC. “The issues of Mumbai are completely different from those of New York or London.

We have prepared our calculator considering Mumbai-specific lifestyle, transportation, energy-use and waste-disposal patterns,” she said.