by Allen Teal

Created on: March 03, 2010

When dealing with ecological issues, the idea of a carbon footprint is often cited as an indication of how eco-friendly a person or a company is. As a way to measure the seriousness of the commitment to becoming friendly to the environment, carbon footprints are one reasonable one to use. Understanding what a carbon footprint is does not require a lot of effort or being environmentally informed.

A carbon footprint is the sum total of all of the carbon consumption that is required to keep you alive.

You must add up all of the fossil fuels that you burn. This list can get quite long because everything you do requires fuel to be burned in some way. Everything you eat draws on some form of carbon consumption. Your type of work, your lifestyle, and your recreation all have to be added into this total. Many times, the line to find all of the carbon consumed to produce and bring something into your life can become very long.

All fossil fuels contain carbon.

As the building block of life, carbon is found in all living creatures. When they die, the carbon that their bodies contain is returned in one form or another into the environment. As dead plant and animal tissue sinks into the depths of the earth, the pressures change the carbon compounds. Some are changed to coal. Others become petroleum or natural gas. When these fuels are burned, the bulk of this carbon is released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

Even biofuels contain carbon.

While they are toted as being clean burning and more eco-friendly, gasohol, bio-diesel, and other such fuels still contain carbon and give off carbon dioxide. Using any type of fuel that contains carbon adds to the size of your carbon footprint. Even electric cars leave a carbon footprint because they use electricity to charge their batteries and a portion of that electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels.

What you eat affects your carbon footprint.

Unless you go into your yard and eat the dandelion leaves, almost everything else is going to add great quantities of carbon to your footprint. Most people do not stop to consider the amount of energy used to produce the food that they purchase on the weekly grocery purchase. Farm tractors and the farmer's homes and other vehicles all consume fuel to grow your potato. Factories burn huge quantities of food to process meat and other foods. The goods are shipped across the country and sometimes around the world to reach your table.

If you take a hot shower, your carbon footprint

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