We’re proud of having cut our carbon footprint in half in the past 3 years, as you will have seen mentioned elsewhere on our website. I’ve finished measuring our carbon footprint for this year, and have come up with some numbers that any extra-green-keen customers out there might wish to use to calculate how much carbon-footprint was involved in producing their kitchen.
| 2008-09 | 2009-10 | 2010-11 | |
| kg CO2e per Cabinet1 | 28.2 | 22.0 | 18.0 |
| Reduction since 2008-2009 | 22% | 36% |
1 – CO2e: Carbon Dioxide Equivalent, the standard measurement of carbon footprint.
So for an average kitchen that has 12 cabinets, made in 2010-2011 we would have created: 12 x 18 kg = 216kg of CO2e during the making of that kitchen.
This does not include the carbon-footprint of the wood used in the cabinets. I looked into assessing the carbon footprint of the wood used, but because wood traps/sequesters carbon, it decays over time, and carbon-based energy is also used during the extraction of the wood, it’s a complicated issue. Here are two sources for example.
Arguably you could consider your cabinets to be reducing your carbon footprint by actually storing carbon, but according to the Climate Smart Methodology we follow, what is most important is to measure what we contribute and can control, because that is where we can make direct improvements. We’re definitely proud of the improvements we’ve been able to make – as we projected with our comprehensive recycling program, our landfill waste has been reduced by over 95%!