Recently by Kathy Hopkin

I'll be the first of Esther's guest bloggers while she is away taking a well deserved break. I am a fellow SusMo volunteer, and also work full time for walkit.com. I completed an MSc in Climate Change at UEA last year, and have a particular interest in personal carbon emissions, sustainable lifestyle choices and behavioural change.

Our personal carbon emissions are created by the energy used to heat our homes, run cars and motorcycles, and travel by plane. They also include emissions created in the growth, packaging and shipping of foods, along with other consumer products. These types of emissions constitute about 44% of the UK total, with the annual carbon footprint of the typical Briton being around 10 tonnes of CO2.

Most climate scientists agree that the average global temperature rise must be kept below 2.0oC in order to prevent catastrophic climate change. It is estimated that to remain within this limit, personal emissions would have to be no more than one tonne of CO2 per person, per year, globally. Clearly, the UK is falling far short of this target.

But changing behaviour is not easy. Particularly for generations who have grown up since the 1980's, where throwaway culture really took hold. Ready meals in disposable packaging, electrical goods that seldom last more than a couple of years, and cheap high street fashion that is discarded come the new season's trends. Even the most damaging behaviours such as flying are disproportionately cheap in comparison to the environmental effect they have.

But there is one thing that is not getting ever cheaper, in fact it's set to get more and more expensive, and those are the fossil fuels required to heat and power our homes. Reducing domestic energy use is something that all of us should be aiming to do. Even if climate change and environmental issues are not motivation enough for individuals to change other aspects of their lifestyle, the financial savings made from being a little wiser around the home should be.

iMeasure is a smart little website that allows you to enter your gas and electricity readings each week, and then tells you how much carbon dioxide this equates to. Not only that, but it also gives you the average of other users, so if you're the competitive type, you can see how well you've done compared to others. This weekly monitoring is great at keeping your household energy use at the forefront of your mind, thus preventing you from slipping back into any wasteful habits that you may have had. And over time, this could mean significant savings on your home energy bills.

iMeasure was created by researchers at the Environmental Change Institute based at Oxford University, so the site is a wealth of information on loads of stuff, such as transport, climate change campaigns, in-depth carbon footprint calculators, and climate science research. And it's all for free! So why not give it a go and sign up.