The Value Of Carbon Counting + How To Do It Without Driving Yourself Crazy

A year ago, I had an "aha" moment in an unlikely place: an alfalfa field in Nevada.

I'd been working for an ecological nonprofit to restore plant communities in a lake region. On this particular day, as I was planting a silver sagebrush plant, I watched 10 diesel trucks owned by the company I worked for drive past. To get to where I was standing, I remembered, I'd also driven an hour and a half into the middle of the desert in a truck. And the plant in my hand had been grown in a greenhouse that operated 24/7 and was powered by fossil fuels. Hundreds of gallons of water from the rivers that feed Walker Lake—the same lake we were trying to save—would have to be delivered to it to improve its survivability in the desert.

In that instant, I immediately questioned the overall impact I was having. I'd learned about the value of restoration work as an environmental studies major in college, but none of my professors ever told me the amount of energy, labor, and natural resources it takes to restore damaged lands.

I fully support conservation and know that it's critical to our planet, but when you're working in the field for 10 hours a day on a planting project that may or may not survive, you can't help but wonder if there is a better way to make a positive difference. I knew the work I was doing had good intentions, but was it truly outweighing my overall footprint?

Naturally, companies have far greater carbon footprints than most individual people. So in order to truly understand your impact, you need to understand the impact of the brands you purchase. In my current role as a sustainability manager for the climate tech startup Green Places, I conduct greenhouse gas inventory assessments to help clients implement and execute carbon reduction projects, reducing their footprints in the process.

You can't manage what you don't measure, and I believe that the first step to becoming more sustainable is educating yourself on your true carbon impact. This means taking a deep dive into what foods you buy, how many packages you order weekly, how you commute to work, and more. Every small action matters and needs to be accounted for. Tools like the Berkeley CoolClimate calculator make it easy to get a sense of your footprint and where it comes from.

Once you understand your footprint, you can take tiny acts to reduce it. Through my work, I've seen how tiny acts for the climate can lead to huge emission savings.

One example of this is tackling what's known as "vampire loads"—electricity consumed by an electronic device while it is turned off or on standby mode but remains plugged in. Vampire power is a constant drain on people's wallets as well as the electrical grid, accounting for an estimated 5 to 10% of electricity use in residential homes and 1% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions.