Perspective chapter: Quantifying the Carbon Footprint of a High School: A Three Part Study

Abstract

Reducing the impact of human activities on the environment requires prioritizing awareness. Measuring the direct and indirect effects of human actions is crucial to increasing awareness and prompting behavioral change. The carbon footprint is a widely used method of measurement in this regard. This study comprises three parts. The first part involved providing pre-training to students and teachers at Lokman Hekim Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School, which has 304 students and 29 teachers. A 15-question awareness questionnaire was then administered to determine their understanding of carbon footprints. The results showed that the students were knowledgeable about climate change and global warming but lacked sufficient understanding of carbon footprints. In the second part of the study, a face-to-face measurement study was conducted with 295 students to calculate the annual average amount of CO2 emitted by the students based on categories. The results showed that the students emitted an average of 7.43 tons of CO2 per year. The highest amount of emissions, 3 tons CO2e/year, was attributed to household factors, while 2.135 tons CO2e/year resulted from lifestyle habits. In the third part of the study, the institutional carbon emissions released by the high school building were calculated. The emission amounts from Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 were determined to be 85,368, 16,716, and 18,916 tons CO2e/year, respectively. As a result, the total institutional carbon footprint of the high school was calculated to be 120,984 tons of CO2e/year.