Carbon Footprint 101

Charmian Love

May 13, 2010

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I have an embarrassing secret.  Until today, I probably could not have told you what my carbon footprint was within any reasonable range.

But after hearing Mike Berners-Lee talk about his new book  How Bad are Bananas: The Carbon Foot Print of Everything, I feel like I am well on my way to being more aware and conscientious of how different choices affect my footprint.

So here is what I’ve learned…

First off, mankind produces 50 billion tonnes of CO2E each year.  In the UK each person, on average, produces 15 tonnes of CO2E.   This 15 tonnes is broken into a series of categories, including:

  • 13% household fuel
  • 12% food and drink from shops
  • 11% defense, education, health, social services
  • 10% household vehicle fuel (petrol for the car)
  • 9% household energy
  • 8% personal travel (not business travel)
  • 5% cars (the supply chain construction, not the fuel)
  • 4% electrical appliances and computers
  • 4% hotels, pubs, catering
  • 3% ‘other’ personal transport
  • 2% textiles, clothing
  • 2% water, sewage
  • 1% paper, printing
  • 10% other

With that in mind, here are a few items that you may think twice about purchasing, or at least, think through the implications of different options.

  • Return trip to Hong Kong:  4.6 tonnes of CO2E average, 13.4 tonnes if you fly first class.
  • Drying your hands: drip-dry 0 grams, paper towels 10 grams, hand dryer 20 grams.
  • Asparagus: local and in season 125 grams, flown in from Peru 3.5 kg
  • One red rose: from the garden 0g, from Kenya 350g, from a Holland hot house 2.1 kg
  • Burger:  veggie burger 1kg, 4oz Cheeseburger 3.5 kg
  • Return trip to Glasgow: by bike 53kg bike, by train 120kg, by car 330kg, by plane 500kg
  • Water you drink: 1 pint of tap water 0.14 grams, 500ml of bottled water 160 grams (average – but this can go up depending on how far the water is coming from…)

There is no excuse.  Businesses can’t say carbon footprints aren’t important because customers don’t care, nor can government’s claim that their constituencies aren’t interested in it as an issue.  As consumers and voters, we’re equally to blame – and need to stop  making the excuse that  we aren’t acting on our footprint because the private and public sectors aren’t providing the information needed.  We need to move beyond this and realize we’re all part of a system, and thus all have responsibilities to the sustainability of this system.

It isn’t easy when carbon is intangible – something we can’t see, taste, touch nor hear.  But that is why we need to get people thinking about a carbon ‘instinct’ – similar to the instinct we have built over time in understand how money works.  We know we can afford to buy a cup of tea by rattling the change in our pocket, and equally we know we (probably) can’t afford to buy a house on any given day.

We need to embed in people’s mindsets a similar instinct for our collective footprints…with the hopes that it will shift behaviours and eventually create a new culture for carbon.

For more on the movement from mindsets to culture change – check out John’s recent piece from McKinsey’s ‘What Matters’.