Compare Your Carbon Footprint to Your Country’s Average

A tonnage means little on its own. Here is how Decarbonr puts yours in context.

🌎 “Is that a lot?”

It is the first question anyone asks after seeing their own carbon footprint, and a single number cannot answer it. Six tonnes a year could be well below where you live or well above it. The useful answer needs two reference points: what people around you typically emit, and what a climate-safe level actually looks like. Decarbonr shows you both, and keeps showing them as your own number changes.

Two benchmarks, not one

Your national average tells you where you stand relative to the infrastructure, climate and habits you share with the people around you. National averages vary widely around the world, largely because of differences in energy systems, housing, transport and diet — so comparing yourself to a global figure, or to another country’s, can be misleading in either direction.

The sustainable target tells you where the number needs to go. Decarbonr uses 2 tonnes of CO₂e per person per year — about 5.48 kg a day — as its reference target: a common shorthand for a personal footprint compatible with limiting warming to 1.5°C, not an official IPCC figure. Being below your country’s average is good news; it is not the same as being on target. Seeing both at once keeps that distinction honest.

What you see in the app

Comparison in Decarbonr is not a one-off calculator result. It sits on top of the things you actually log.

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32 countries compared

Fossil CO₂ emissions per person in 32 countries (Our World in Data, Global Carbon Project, 2024), with the 2-tonne target drawn across them, so “high” and “low” mean something specific to where you live.

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Your daily goal, made visible

The dashboard shows today’s total against your daily goal, by category, with charts for the week, the month and the year.

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Your year, as an estimate

Once you have entries on 7 different days, Decarbonr shows a yearly estimate next to the 2-tonne target and, for 32 countries, your country’s average fossil CO₂ per person.

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Insights on your week

Insights compare your last 7 days with the 7 days before, name your biggest source and count your logging streak, so the comparison keeps pointing at your own choices.

Where the gap actually comes from

Knowing you are above or below average is only a starting point. The reason to track rather than calculate once is to see which part of your life creates the gap. Decarbonr breaks your footprint into the pieces you log:

Food — add what you eat by hand or, with the AI add-on, scan a barcode to look the product up on Open Food Facts, or estimate a meal’s footprint from a photo, ingredient by ingredient.
Travel — car, plane, train, bus, cruise, bike or on foot, with per-kilometre emission factors from the European Environment Agency and the IPCC; for flights and cruises, the app works out the distance from two cities.
Everything else — 11 home and lifestyle trackers including heating, electricity, water, waste and digital use, which use simpler averages than food and travel.

The category driving the difference from your national average is not always the one you would guess. That is the point at which a benchmark becomes useful — when it tells you where to look.

Comparison that stays private

Comparing yourself with a country average does not require sharing anything, and nothing in the app compares you with other users. There is no account to create and nothing synced to a server: your entries are stored on your device.

To keep the comparison moving in the right direction, the app adds a daily goal, streaks and awards, plus a climate library of short explainers, most with links to their sources. Decarbonr is available in 44 languages on iPhone and iPad with iOS 18 or later, and needs a subscription after the introduction screens.

Find out where you stand

No account, no ads, and your entries are stored on your device.

General information only. Footprint estimates are based on the emission factors described on our research page and are approximations, not audited measurements.