Report on Greenhouse Calculator
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Report on Greenhouse Calculator
Introduction: The Greenhouse Calculator is a program that calculates a person’s annual greenhouse gas emissions from everyday activities such as washing dishes and watching TV. The program guides the user through a series of questions relating to the everyday or weekly use of certain household related items including; transport, hot water, heating, cooling, refrigeration, cooking, lighting, clothes drying, other appliances and waste. Once the Annual household greenhouse gas emissions were recorded, different options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions were explored.
The results for my Greenhouse calculation are as follows:
Greenhouse gas
(tonnes CO2)
Energy costs
(dollars)
(grams)
(grams)
(grams)
Particulates
(grams)
(grams)
Transport
10.2303
3631.47
14.7051
251.4268
25.3993
0.3673
0.9166
Hot Water
2.4053
344.84
0.2041
0.0559
0.0097
0.0164
0.1740
Heating
4.9126
710.49
0.2375
0.0915
0.0187
0.0253
0.0010
Cooling
0.0247
0.0141
0.0021
0.0002
0.0007
0.0255
Refrigeration
1.7176
217.60
0.9771
0.1449
0.0124
0.0495
1.7670
Cooking
0.5207
71.38
0.1391
0.0241
0.0027
0.0079
0.2251
Lighting
0.4187
53.04
0.2382
0.0353
0.0030
0.0121
0.4307
Clothes Drying
0.8906
112.83
0.5067
0.0751
0.0064
0.0257
0.9162
Other Appliances
1.8400
233.11
1.0468
0.1552
0.0133
0.0530
1.8929
Waste
1.0506
0.0000
0.0000
0.0000
0.0000
0.0000
TOTAL
24.0110
5377.90
18.0687
252.0109
25.4656
0.5576
6.3490
Discussion of results: After looking at the results, I identified some key areas with fairly high greenhouse gas emissions that I thought I could reduce. The key areas were: Transport (10.2303 tonnes of CO2), Hot Water (2.4053 tonnes of CO2), Lighting (0.4187 tonnes of CO2), Clothes Drying (0.8906 tonnes of CO2) and other Appliances (1.8400 tonnes of CO2).
I looked at my household usage of public transport, and decided that I could cut down the number of tram trips per week, from 1-5 to 0. This change saw a 0.15% decrease in greenhouse gas emissions from transport.
I noticed after a week of observation, that my household does too many loads of washing. By waiting until there is a full load of washing before starting the machine, the greenhouse gas emissions from hot water usage went down by 11.58%.
If lights were turned off when a room was vacated, instead of being left on for hours unnecessarily, the number of low voltage lights used for more than two hours per day would halve. This change resulted in a 43.35% decrease in greenhouse gas emissions from lighting.
It really wasn’t necessary to use the clothes dryer during summer. So cutting out the use of the dryer during summer saw a 14.36% decrease in the greenhouse gas emissions from clothes drying.
In an attempt to cut down on the amount of emissions from watching TV, I decided to read a book or go for a walk instead of watching it. However, this change