Carbon Footprinting Survey 2009

Each of us has what is called a carbon footprint – in simple English this is the amount of carbon dioxide (CO²) that is emitted directly as a result of our personal (or household) activities - mainly household energy and transport use.

We are aiming to track the carbon footprint of the Parish so that we can all see how we are doing on our journey to a low carbon future. We would like to encourage as many villagers as possible to sign up and record their household carbon footprint once a year.

If you are a parish resident please help us by filling in the questionnaire which will record your footprint. To provide consistency from year to year there is six week window for this to happen - this year (2009) it is from 15th August to 27th September. During this window, parish members can find a link to the survey through their account page.

Information from individual households will be used to produce an annual village average. You can choose to make your household's footprint publicly visible, or to keep it private, in your account settings.

If we can show that we are reducing our carbon emissions as a community, it may help us to bid for more funds which could help village organisations (and WFEG) with energy-saving projects.

If you had an energy health check in late 2007 or early 2008 and agreed that this information could be passed to WFEG, your previous carbon footprint will be entered into the site. This gives us a baseline so we can see how the parish footprint changes over time, and when you fill in this year's footprint questionnaire you will also be able to see how your household's footprint has changed. Please note that the figure shown here is likely to be higher than the one you were given at the time as the factors advised by the Government for converting energy use into carbon dioxide emissions have changed since then.

The average household footprint in the UK is around 10 tonnes of CO² per year (excluding consumption which may double this basic figure). About 45% of the average footprint comes from heating fuel, 15% from domestic electrical use (non-heating) and around 40% from travel (mainly car and plane travel).