carbon footprint
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.48 in modern English
24
Scrabble Score
15
Letters
4
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A measure of the amount of carbon dioxide produced by a person, organization or state in a given time.
Example Sentences
- "House insulation is another way of reducing energy consumption and carbon footprint, as well as double glazing and draught-proofing."
- "Usage of local products has boosted the income of local farmers, created more work opportunities and lowered carbon footprints. Previously, business owners in Jiasian competed with each other and fought over business opportunities."
- "Also true is that building HS2 will produce considerable carbon emissions. However, those emissions pale into insignificance if this claim from the business case is true: "To put HS2's carbon footprint in perspective, the estimated total carbon emissions from both building and operating Phase 1 for a full 120 years produces the same amount of carbon as just one month of the UK's road network.""
- "But the oil companies would like you to think that’s how it works. It turns out that the concept of the “carbon footprint”, that popular measure of personal impact, was the brainchild of an advertising firm working for BP."
Etymology
Coined in a 1999 BBC Vegetarian Good Food article and after the 1990s term ecological footprint and popularized by a 2005 advertising campaign for fossil-fuel company BP in order to shift blame for climate change onto individual consumers. Modelled after the ecological footprint concept developed in the 1990s.