What's Your Carbon Footprint?
The average American's lifestyle produces about 16 metric tons of CO₂ every year — four times the global average. See where you stand in two minutes, and what it would take to bring your number down to zero.
1Getting Around
Your daily driving and transit habits.
2Flying
A round trip New York–London is about 14 hours in the air — and roughly 1.8 tons of CO₂.
3Eating
A single serving of beef carries about 7.7 kg of CO₂ — more than five average meals.
4Operating Your Home
Heating, cooling, and powering a home is often the biggest slice of a household footprint.
5Building or Buying New?
A new home's materials and construction carry "embodied" carbon — often 25–100 tons before anyone moves in. We spread it over a 30-year life.
How we calculate this
Driving & transit: 0.40 kg CO₂e per mile for a gasoline car, 0.26 for a hybrid, 0.11 for an EV on the average US grid, and 0.15 per passenger-mile on public transit.
Flying: ~110 kg CO₂e per hour in economy, based on Clever Carbon's flight benchmarks (e.g., New York–London, ~900 kg over 7 hours).
Diet: annual totals from 1.5 t (vegan) to 3.3 t (meat at most meals), anchored to per-serving values such as 7.7 kg per serving of beef (Clever Carbon).
Home operations: electricity intensity of 2.8–5.4 kWh per square foot per year depending on performance, at the US average grid intensity of 776 lbs CO₂/MWh; natural gas at 119.6 lbs CO₂ per thousand cubic feet (CNaught / EIA). Solar reduces grid electricity accordingly. Household totals are divided among household members.
New-home embodied carbon: modeled from CNaught's home construction calculator — concrete, insulation type, roofing, solar hardware, other materials, and construction transport — typically 25–100 metric tons per home, amortized over 30 years and shared across the household.
All figures are directional estimates for education, not an audit. Sources: Clever Carbon pocket guide; CNaught home carbon methodology (Building Green, Circular Ecology, Magwood, LETI); US EPA & EIA averages.
Ready to erase your footprint?
Science-backed carbon credit portfolios on the COGNITION Carbon Offsets Marketplace, powered by CNaught. The average US household can offset an entire year for about $140.
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