Assessment of Carbon Footprint of a School: A Case Study at Narandeniya National School in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Calculating Carbon Footprint (CFP) is the valuable first step towards making quantifiable emission reduction because it indicates the impact of a human, an organization or the product make on global warming. Recently, different types of organizations such as universities, fire brigades, rescue services, food manufacturers, hotels, hospital have estimated their CFP. This study was focused on to assess die CFP of a school. Main objective of this study was to assess the CFP of Narandeniya national school in Kamburupitiya Divisional Secretariat in Sri Lanka. After defining the boundaries according to GHG protocol, CFP of each emission sources and activity were calculated in tCO2-e per year by multiplying activity data with emission factors (EF). EFs were developed according to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. Activity data were collected for the study from bills, data sheets, personal communication and questionnaire survey o f 100 people in the school, selected by stratified random sampling method. The results show that total CFP of the school is 73.25t C02-e/yr and CFP of school person is 0 .034tC02-e/yr. Student and staff commuting accounted the highest CFP (89.6%), followed by electricity consumption (6.8%) and usage of LPG (2.5% ) of the total CFP. It can be concluded that the total CFP of this school and per capita CFP are comparatively less. This School can reduce their CFP directly or indirectly by applying green concepts.