How to Calculate Your Personal Carbon Footprint

To calculate your personal carbon footprint, add up the emissions from four areas — home energy, transport, diet, and the goods and services you buy — usually expressed in tonnes of CO₂ equivalent per year. The fastest way is a good calculator, but knowing what drives the number helps you cut it, not just measure it.

What makes up a personal carbon footprint

• Home energy heating, electricity, and hot water — often the single largest slice in colder climates.
• Transport your car mileage, public transport, and especially flights, where one long-haul return trip can add 2–3 tonnes of CO₂ on its own.
• Diet what you eat, with red meat and dairy carrying a far higher footprint per kilo than plant-based foods.
• Goods & services everything you buy — clothes, electronics, and the shared emissions of public infrastructure you rely on.

Typical footprints by country (and why they’re estimates)

Rough per-person averages are a useful starting point: around 5 tonnes of CO₂ a year in the UK, roughly 15 tonnes in the US, and a global average near 4 tonnes. Treat these as ballpark figures — they depend on how a country’s grid, imports, and shared emissions are counted, and your own lifestyle can land well above or below them. To move from a national estimate to your actual number, the free Evertreen CO₂ calculator walks you through your home, travel, and habits in a few minutes.

The biggest levers — and offsetting the rest

Once you have a figure, most of it usually comes from a handful of choices: flying less, switching to a renewable electricity tariff or heat pump, driving fewer miles (or electric), and shifting toward a more plant-rich diet. These reductions matter first — but nobody gets to zero, so the honest step is to offset the remainder with credible tree planting. With Evertreen every tree is geolocated with a GPS pin and progress photos, backed by on-the-ground field videos, so you can see exactly where your trees are growing from as little as £1.5 per tree. We publish our full method openly, including how we estimate tree CO₂, and certified Verra & Gold Standard carbon credits are available on request — the reason we’re featured in 300+ media outlets.

Frequently asked questions

What is a good personal carbon footprint? Climate targets point toward roughly 2 tonnes of CO₂ per person per year by 2050, so anything below your national average (about 5 tonnes in the UK) is a solid direction of travel.

How accurate are carbon footprint calculators? They give a reliable estimate, not a lab measurement — the more detail you enter about your energy, travel, and diet, the closer the result gets to reality.

Can planting trees offset my carbon footprint? Trees can offset the emissions you can’t yet cut, and with Evertreen’s geolocated, traceable planting you can verify the impact rather than take it on trust. It works best alongside real reductions, not instead of them.