The average carbon footprint for a resident of the UK is
between 6 – 10 tonnes/year. For my 2020 New Years Resolution I decided to (a)
measure my carbon footprint on a daily basis and (b) try and achieve a level of
just 3 tonnes/year. I researched various websites, blogs and carbon-measuring
sources and decided to focus my monitoring on 4 aspects: energy usage, travel,
diet and plastic waste.
Much to my family’s amusement I have covered our fridge with
an array of charts and tables over which I gently obsess. They are less amused
by how my ‘dad-habit’ of turning off every unused electrical item has reached a
particular crescendo. Or how quickly I will share my pre-prepared monologue on
the carbon footprint variance between pouring milk (vegetarian, but with milk
from a local cow) vs orange juice (vegan, but with juice from halfway across
the planet) over my morning muesli. Where I really seem to have pushed the
boundaries of acceptable family behaviour is in my obsession (and it IS
an obsession) with segregating all plastic from our household rubbish. To be
fair, doing the separating is the easy bit. It is the task of weighing,
recording and then disposing of it all which is where familial patience runs
thinnest. Maybe if I didn’t do it on the kitchen counter I might not upset
quite as many people (but where is the fun in wearing a hair shirt if nobody
else gets to experience it?).
We are now at the end of January and the results from Month
1 are fascinating. For example, despite living in a house where gas is only
used for heating (we have an electric cooker) the CO2 footprint from my gas
usage is 5 times that of my electricity footprint (ie 6kgCO2/day vs
1.2kgCO2/day). Furthermore, turning down the heating and reducing the time that
the boiler runs has a negligible impact. It is possible that our 15 year old
boiler is inefficient and needs changing. It is equally possible that our neighbours
have tapped into our gas line.
On the electrical usage front we are undoubtedly doing
better. That said, try as we might, we cannot get the 24/7 smart meter
(positioned strategically in the middle of the house so no one can possibly
miss its gleaming readings) to go below 200W. Seriously. We have gone around
the house turning off every single electrical item, but the reading never goes
below 200W. Either the smart meter itself is drawing 200W (unlikely), or, once
again, the finger of suspicion points to our neighbours tapping into our
electrical circuit. (And to think they seemed such nice people when we moved
in.)
Our energy usage is offset by the 7 small rooftop solar
panels. Over January the output from these has doubled as the sunlight hours
have increased. During the first week of January we ‘recovered’ 0.25kgCO2/day
from the photovoltaics, rising to 0.5kgCO2/day in the last week. My hope is
that by Spring our PV generation will exceed our domestic electrical usage.
Interestingly our neighbours also have pv panels. I am thinking of building a
big extension just to overshadow them.
You might expect travel to be the biggest contributor to my
carbon footprint but not so. My 2008 Prius generates 200g of carbon per mile,
but outside of work I drive less than 10 miles a day (ie 2kg/day). If I started
running to the gym it might even be less (and I might be thinner…but then
surely I wouldn’t need to go to the gym?). I am not including work-related
travel in my calculations. This is because it is dealt with by the company,
Isle. At Isle we offset 10 times our carbon footprint. Last year, 10 months
into the year, we calculated that our corporate carbon footprint from flights
alone was 70 tonnes. We rounded this up to 100 tonnes for the full year and then
off-set ten times this amount via the brilliant UN-Carbon Offset Programme
(- https://offset.climateneutralnow.org/howtooffset).
It is a wonderful website. You simply select your project(s), each of which has
a clearly stated £/kg, and then go to the checkout. It’s like shopping on
Amazon, but without the guilt. Offsetting a thousand tonnes of carbon took less
than 5 minutes and cost less than £3.5k.
My diet is the source of my biggest carbon impact. I decided
it would break my marriage to try to calculate the specific carbon input for
each ingredient so instead I am standing on the shoulders of giants
(Scarborough et al, 2014) and using their carefully researched figures for
different meal types. They produced a table for different meals, with a ‘Heavy
Meat’ at 7.2kg/carbon, and Vegan at 2.9kg, for example. My average so far is
4.34kg/meal. This puts me just between a Low Meat Eater and a Pescatarian. Or
to put it into common language, I am mostly a Vegetarian, but every now and
then I like a big roast or a bacon sandwich (Readers of my previous blog will
no doubt conclude that this is typical of a middle-class Liberal. I am at least
true to type).
The biggest surprise from my little experiment however is
plastic. 6kg of carbon is produced for each 1kg of plastic we throw away. When
I look at the rubbish we throw away in our house (as oppose to recycle) it is
mostly plastic, hence I decided I should include plastic in my carbon metrics. However
after a month of diligently separating, measuring and recording it has become
clear that while the volume of plastic waste is
depressingly large (see photo) its weight is actually very low, typically less
than 10g/head/day. It accounts for less than 2% of my typical daily carbon
footprint. With this in mind, going forward I am removing the plastic metric
from my calculations. Since I weigh the plastic using the kitchen scales this
single act may both save my family from the ravages of food poisoning, and may
remove the kitchen-ban that I know my wife is contemplating placing on me.
To help incentivise me to keep my carbon levels low I have
committed to off-set 10 times my carbon footprint at the end of the year. Why
10 times? Well, the number 10 is particularly special for me this year. Very
little happened of note on January 29th 2010 (in fact, I have
searched numerous websites and found it to be a uniquely uneventful date) but,
for me at least, it will always be noteworthy. January 29th 2010 was
the official birthday of Isle. It was the day Isle was incorporated. This week
therefore marks our 10th birthday! Over the past decade Isle has
steadily grown to become a team of 90 people working across 12 countries for
over 300 utility clients.
As noted above, my dream target is keep my carbon
contribution below 3 tonne/year during 2020. If anyone wants to join me in this
challenge I would be delighted to share my spreadsheet (it comes with all the
usual caveats and denials). Based on my performance during the first week of
January I was heading for over 6 tonnes/year, but the average for the
last week has been just over 4 tonnes. Squeezing out that extra tonne is going
to be tough. I think I need to go and speak to my neighbours…
