There are countless things we do everyday that impacts the environment but, let us focus on carbon exposition. Let the following example of Betty enlighten you in this field. However, goods and wares considered in this article are mainstream and non-ecological every day consumer products. Betty is also a generalized person, so is the values described herein of carbon dioxide emissions, based on different sources. It is common sense that these values can not be hundred percent accurate, they are only meant to give some sort of idea of how much a person really impacts the environment a year.
Betty is a single woman, living alone in her apartment in central Stockholm. She owns a car that she takes to her job every day, 10 kilometers there and back again. On a working day Betty wakes up when her clock radio says 06:50 a.m. The clock by the way was manufactured in Japan, 8 200 kilometers away and whose parts have been manufactured elsewhere around Asia. The manufacturing process of each part releases carbon dioxide, as with anything else manufactured. Along with transport costs before the radio was assembled and afterwards, the total released carbon dioxide is somewhere around 4 kilos for just that one radio. Of course the real amount of carbon dioxide is more since this goes only for one radio out of a production of 3 000 a year.
Next thing Betty does is to take a shower; the water is electrically heated, which consumes about 200kg of carbon dioxide a year just for our Betty. The water too has been both transported to a water purification plant and then transported to Betty’s taps through pressure pumps. This also costs carbon dioxide, roughly 600 grams each time Betty takes a shower, that’s 220kg a year. Next Betty puts on some clothes, mostly cotton based but also some polymer clothing. A typical cotton field with continuos crop (not rotary) will produce 0.7mg Carbon per hectare per year. Normal casual clothing can consist of cotton that when produced releases as much as 1 kg carbon only that. Just add transport costs and refining procedures and you reach 2 kilograms for a new set of clothing each day.
Betty needs some good breakfast before she goes to work. Hers comprises corn flakes and milk and a banana to that. Cornflakes are from corn; (maize) often originating from South America and by this fact leads to lots of exhausted carbon dioxide when transported to refineries. Corn is cheap to produce in fact, though you need a lot of it and especially if you are to make Cornflakes (by far the most popular breakfast cereal in the world). This also leads to strain on the environment by as much as 100g of carbon dioxide per Cornflakes a person and year. The milk is better for the environment since it is produced locally; nevertheless, it contributes to global warming. The pastures, apart from over-fertilizing the soil, covers large land areas. If left at nature’s will, lush forests would grow there instead and they tend to absorb more carbon dioxide than grasslands, therefore there is a net increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
When Betty eats her banana, it ends its cycle after having first been produced by poor farmers in either South America, West Indies or Africa, then stored in a cool container on alternating bus, air plane, truck and boat, until it reaches Betty’s mouth. We have to add to that the fact that banana plantations are impossible without major deforestation of the rainforest that normally stand for absorption of tons of carbon dioxide every year, along with erosion. We end up with 15 kg of carbon dioxide every year for every banana Betty eats during the course of one year.
Now Betty has to go to work and she drives the mentioned car, at the same time releasing about 3 kg of carbon dioxide in the process. Had she taken the train it would have been questions of just few grams if taken into account just the carbon ‘cost’ just to travel. Modern commuter trains are 96% recyclable meaning less waste and also carbon emissions than a used automobile. Betty also has to drive back, mind you, totaling 6kg of carbon dioxide every working day for her trips.
Hopefully, she will avoid drinking coffee at work, as it is not good for your health, nor the environment. In fact coffee is the single most transported product from the plant kingdom in the world; therefore, the single biggest reason for carbon emissions from that same kingdom. Coffee takes time to produce but the net gain net loss of carbon dioxide when cultivating coffee is roughly the same. However, refining, roasting, grinding etc. coffee beans is also a major cause for release of carbon dioxide.
Betty works on her computer most of her working day. Computers are power-consuming devices and may be up to ten thousand times more power-consuming than a light bulb if left on all day. This leads to yet another butt-load of carbon dioxide emissions since the electricity is most often produced in coal or oil based power plants.
Finally, the working day is over; Betty needs some food, the grocery store has what she needs. Most of the products you already know will have emissions of carbon dioxide through manufacturing processes and transport. But did you know that 15% of carbon dioxide emissions actually comes from unused foods? Many of the foodstuffs bought Betty will never consume. Instead, she throws them in the trash, without proper sorting of the different sources. So most of her waste is burned for energy and thus releases green house gases. In Sweden, 500 000 tons of unused groceries are thrown away each year, when it would have been better to just have eaten them up instead – humans don’t emit pure carbon dioxide the same way as combustion of waste does.
This article can be further elaborated and expanded in to almost infinity but for the purposes of this project it ends here. It was meant to illustrate and give thought about our daily consumerist lives. How in the end small differences can make a big differences. The lamest excuse of all is ‘I do it because everybody else is doing it’. In this context it means that you should not act as if you can not make a change to the global climate because your efforts would be insignificant. The very thing people are missing is just this, everyone contributes and therefore it is everyone’s responsibility. We are all just living on this planet a short while and we are just ‘borrowing’ it from future generations. The question is whether or not to make a change, because it is our duty, instead the question is where do I start. So, hopefully this article along with the rest in Project Environment will help you to make a start and start preserving this beautiful blue marble of the Solar System.
Some sources (more to be updated):
http://carbonfootprint.com/
http://www.norden.org/webb/news/news.asp?lang=6&id=2536
http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/publications.htm?seq_no_115=181744
‘SVT Rapport’ 19:30 every weekday.
Well said.