Becoming carbon-neutral or carbon-negative has been a goal of many companies and individuals for a long time now – at Pocket-lint we’ve decided to offset our carbon footprint by planting trees (see Ecosia) but there are other ways you can take action of course.
But how do you track your carbon footprint in the first place? Obviously, before you can offset you need to work out how much carbon your various actions emit.
Various calculators and apps are available online and we've featured some of the very best here.
The best apps and sites for tracking your carbon footprint
Capture
This app enables you to track things like the type of food you eat as well as the carbon you use getting about. It can predict your mode of transport and calculate accordingly. You can also set a weekly goal to see how you measure up against friends as well as compare your own emissions from week-to-week.
There are also tips to reduce your carbon emissions, while you can also choose to offset through recognised forestry projects.
Download Capture for Android | iOS
Map My Emissions
This simple carbon calculator doesn't enable you to track other stuff in your life like food or energy, but it does its singular job rather well - you can calculate the carbon debt of any journey by (almost) any means.
It's all based around Google Maps and you can feed the calculator quite granular information on your transport methods - so engine size for cars
For Good
Once you've created an account with this app, you'll be encouraged to put in some personal information such as the type of vehicle you drive and whether you have solar panels or who your energy supplier is. You can also enter your gas and electricity readings. You'll be able to see what impact each answer has.
The app also asks you what type of diet you have and so gives you a score based on food use as well as travel and energy consumption.
Download For Good for Android | iOS
UN Carbon Footprint Calculator
This is a simple calculator that takes into account transport and lifestyle and what's more, it also auto-adjusts for the country that you live in as well as the number of people in your household. You can also enter the size of the house that you live in as well as different information about your diet and other factors.
It's certainly a good way of getting a decent understanding of how much carbon you're using week-to-week.