What is a carbon footprint?

A carbon footprint is the amount of carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere by the activities of an individual, community, or organization. A carbon footprint can be on a minute stage of an individual or family activities, or even on a broad level of a community, an organization, an event, or a country's activities. These activities can be in different ways; they can be social activities, home activities, transport activities, and majorly industrial activities.

For instance, in the home, carbon is released, especially in the form of the carbon dioxide compound. This has more to do with the Africa continent especially as many holes in Africa still make use of charcoal, gathering of wood at home for cooking, plus the use of lantern to generate light at night. All these release a particular level of carbon into the atmosphere. This can be calculated as the amount of carbon print in a home. The use of automobiles and industrial machines also are calculated as part of carbon print.

The short answer to this is the amount of gasses or carbon that is emitted by items and things. Humans, plants, vehicles, and more all leave a carbon footprint. This gas, carbon dioxide (CO2) is mostly related to human activity.

As the consumption of fossil fuels is used we emit the CO2, which in turns leaves an imprint or our footprint in carbon. It is not easy to correctly calculate the total carbon footprint, as there are a lot of variables that must be input, and not all of them are known.

The carbon footprint became an issue in the 1990s when a couple of scientists wanted to know what the earth was putting out vs. what we were consuming. The environmental factors are the main concerns for the ecological purposes and the future of the renewing of energies for the planet.