6 Ways to Offset Your Web Surfing Emissions

The average American spends nearly 28 hours a month web surfing. Sure, websites like Planet Green are irresistible, after all. But when we look down the various paths to try and tally up carbon emissions, we quickly see that web surfing adds up to a whole lot of emissions.

First there is the amount of electricity to run your computer; the energy it takes to run the power plant that generates the electricity, and the lines to carry the electricity to your home; the carbon created in the manufacturing and shipping of your computer, plus the carbon emissions emitted by the computer company itself; the emissions generated by the data servers to house all the information and websites you're surfing; and the emissions from the companies whose sites you surf.

Woo wee—the list grows and becomes ever scarier. But offsetting the carbon emissions from web surfing is actually really easy.

So let's focus on only offsetting one thing: the carbon emissions generated from running your computer while web surfing.

First we have to find out how many pounds of CO2 we emit per month while web surfing. For the sake of ease, we're going to use averages for our numbers. A personal computer uses about 150 watts, and a monitor about 120 watts. So:

(120+150 x 28 hours per month of use)

Next we multiply that by how much CO2 is generated to get 1 kWh of electricity. According to Energy Star, 1 kWh of electricity generates 1.55 lbs of CO2. So:

7.56 kWh x 1.55 lbs CO2 = 11.718 lbs of CO2

Let's round that up and say that we have 12 lbs of CO2 to offset each month. This is actually really easy to offset by doing just on or two tiny things per month.