Valencia First on Carbon Footprints
You often hear people say (usually when they are throwing litter in the street or watering the lawn at midday in the summertime) that their actions are insignificant and “can’t do any harm”. And yet we all leave our very own carbon footprint on what is left of the planet.
Valencia was the first Spanish city to open a Carbon Footprint Office, situated in Paterna’s Technological Park (where Valencia FC trains for most of us!) ITENE also has the operating license for the provision of carbon footprint calculation services with the Bilan Carbone® method, granted by the Association Bilan Carbone ®, and was similarly the first Spanish organization to obtain this licence, in 2012.
The office was opened by ITENE (the Packaging, Transport and Logistics Research Centre) situated in Godella, and is run by director Mercedes Hortal.
A carbon footprint is a measure of the impact our activities have on the environment, and in particular climate change. It relates to the amount of greenhouse gases produced in our day-to-day lives through burning fossil fuels for such essentials as electricity, heating, transportation and heated waterbeds.
The carbon footprint is a measurement of all the greenhouse gases that we individually produce in two parts:
The primary footprint is a measure of our direct emissions of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels, including domestic energy consumption and transportation, over which we have direct control.
The secondary footprint is a measure of the indirect CO2 emissions from the whole lifecycle of products we use – those associated with their manufacture and eventual obsolescence. To put it very simply – the more we buy the more emissions will be caused on our behalf.
The Carbon Footprint allows companies to identify the amount of carbon dioxide omissions that they are responsible for when manufacturing a product, and allows an individual to know the ecological cost of each product or service they consume.
Individuals wishing to discover the extent to which they are destroying the planet, may do so by calculating their personal footprint here:
http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx
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