There are several calculators available on the Internet with which we can roughly assess the environmental impact of our lifestyles. Some enable one to calculate the user’s environmental impact by assessing his/her entire lifestyle, while others focus on nutrition. They are quick and simple calculators, which are catch the attention of users due to their ease of compilation and interpretation, while bearing in mind the essential aspects of everyday life.

The official calculator of the Footprint Network, Calculate your footprint, enables one to calculate one’s “ecological footprint”, that is how much biologically productive land is required to sustain one’s lifestyle.

The questions asked concern nutrition (consumption of meat, fish, eggs and dairy products, local products), lifestyle and clothing habits, the home (with related energy costs and household waste management) and means of transport used. The results are expressed as “planets” and divided into the various components of the Ecological Footprint. The WWF Italian calculator, Make a difference!, evaluates the user’s environmental burden and expresses it in CO2 equivalent, therefore in terms of Carbon Footprint.

The overall impact of an individual is calculated from primary emissions (home and transport/ travel) and secondary emissions (nutrition, purchase of goods and services, entertainment etc.). The calculator asks the user about his/her habits regarding home management, transportation, food and services, and provides a final result in terms of tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year.

Firstly, the Coop calculator, the Expenditure footprint, calculates the environmental impact of the user’s eating habits based on his/her weekly shopping. With the calculator it is possible to simulate shopping, by referring to the main products that end up in the shopping cart and then calculating their environmental impact in terms of carbon footprint.

By multiplying the recommended amount of each food consumed in a balanced diet (proposed by the INRAN nutritional guidelines (now CREA – Alimentazione e Nutrizione) by its environmental impact, we can obtain the average impact of the weekly diet. After specifying the number of family members and the number of shopping days, the user chooses his/her food and indicates the respective amounts.

The calculator compares the average impact of the weekly diet with that obtained by the user- entered input and provides advice and tips for following a healthier diet emphasizing how important it is to consume all of the food categories in a balanced way.

The Sustainable Meat Project