Calculate your business’ carbon footprint

You can measure your business’ impact on the environment by considering the amount of greenhouse gases produced from all of your business activities. This is your business’ carbon footprint.

All businesses have some impact on climate change. Some of the main sources of greenhouse gases from businesses include:

  • emissions from transport, eg employee travel, business vehicles and delivery vehicles
  • energy consumption of buildings and manufacturing, eg gas and electricity
  • the lifecycle of products that you use or produce
  • incineration and decomposition of waste, eg methane is released when waste degrades in landfill sites
  • refrigerants such as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)
  • emissions from agricultural activities, eg methane from cattle and sheep, and emissions from slurry, waste and fertilisers.

When you calculate your carbon footprint, you will see which aspects of your business make the biggest contribution. You can target those areas to reduce your impact.

Tools to calculate your carbon footprint

There are different ways of calculating your carbon footprint. Some tools take into account emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) only, others consider different sets of greenhouse gases.

The Carbon Trust has produced an online carbon footprint calculator for businesses.

The Country Land and Business Association (CLA) has developed a free calculator for land managers. It allows farming businesses to work out the balance of their greenhouse gas emissions, and the carbon stored in trees and soil.

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