Are You Aware Of Your Own Carbon Footprint?

[pottyprof]

We all seem to agree that us humans are an untidy bunch when it comes to looking after out planet. We leave a trail of carbon on a daily basis (and other rubbish). Most of us agree that we should try to reduce the amount of carbon because it can only be a good thing, regardless of our view on climate change.

The wife and myself have been trying to clean up our act by recycling as much rubbish as possible. We have looked into different ways of reducing the amount of energy (and money) we can save. We had the gas boiler changed from a back boiler to a condensing boiler and the savings there are huge. We have looked into generating our own electricity and found that there are several companies installing solar panels for free, if you have a south facing roof that's big enough to take the panels. You get to use the electricity for free but anything extra produced is sold back to the grid by the panel company. The panels are yours after 25 years. We missed out by having a roof 1 metre too narrow but there are plans to install smaller panels with the same rating as soon as the panels are available.

What are you doing to reduce your carbon footprint?

[jethro]

I've always been a make do and mend kind of person, preferring to replace things on a 'when broken' basis rather than 'must have shiniest, newest' one. Whenever the kids now moan about not having a huge new TV or similar, I can argue about the embedded energy costs and climate change All joking apart, I think this is probably one of the biggest contributions we can all make.

In the process of renovating the current house, we've cavity filled all walls which can be filled, put so much insulation in the loft it's almost impossible to store anything there and insulated beneath the ground floors. We've had all the windows replaced with new hardwood ones, they're double glazed with energiKare glass which reduces energy lost through windows by 90%, this is coupled with thick thermo lined curtains. All the radiators are fitted with thermostats but we've stuck with the old boiler for now, when tested it came out at about 78% efficient so it's not too bad. I think the biggest saving we've made is installing a gas Aga; the kitchen is fairly central in the house and it keeps everywhere nice and warm preventing the boiler kicking in plus clothes are hung above it to dry making the tumble dryer obsolete. Our energy consumption has dropped by 38% since it was fitted plus the entire thing is made from recycled materials and it will outlive me, never needing to be replaced.

Day to day, I grow some veg but no where near enough - plans are afoot for a bigger veg plot. We don't eat a great deal of meat but what we do eat comes from the local butcher, sourced from local farms. All the light bulbs are energy savers. Everything compostable is composted. Glass and tins are recycled. I used to recycle cardboard and plastics too but got so fed up of having bin bags of milk cartons kicking around waiting to be taken to the tip that I'm afraid I now bin them. I'm sure the carbon generated making a special trip to the tip far outweighed any benefits of recycling them anyway - the council promises they will start recycling them soon (they've been promising for 3 years now).

I drive a diesel car which does about 45 mpg, I do drive everywhere but living out in the sticks in Somerset, there's no other option, there is no public transport.

I'd love to go down the route of groundsource heat pumps etc but the cost of the outlay is just too much. I'm not planning on staying here more than another couple of years and all research has shown it doesn't add anything to the value of the house, it would be dead money that I can't afford to lose. Perhaps in the next house.

Oh, and I plant lots and lots of trees annually.

[Optimus Prime]

If you have kids do you inherit their ever increasing footprint (and is added to yours) or is that classed as separate?

[johnholmes]

I try to be sensible but have not made any really big changes.

double glazing some years ago, additional loft insulation last year (free 'because of me age!), they refused to add additional wall foam, and I'm too tight to have it done so far, long life light bulbs, driving with a keen eye on the overall mpg, most things are on stand-by, tv/video/pc, but I do turn all but the last one off when away, no longer grow my own veg, think that is about it.

so not a lot but I like to think it helps in a V V small way.

forgot to say recycling-always been keen on this.

I remember over 30 years ago asking the local council in Cheshire why it stopped collecting paper-too expensive they replied!

Edited July 1, 2010 by johnholmes

[Thundery wintry showers]

I rarely use central heating unless the internal temperature is well below 15C (putting extra layers on usually suffices), and rarely leave appliances on unattended. In fact I rarely leave anything on standby, except for the PC/laptop in cases when I want to go back to something later. I also use lights to the minimum extent necessary and make sure to turn lights off when I'm not using them. I also try to recycle everything that I can.

I don't drive, although admittedly this isn't primarily down to environmental issues (I have a disability which means I couldn't even if I wanted to).

There are some areas that people could point to where I'm not very environmentally friendly. I eat out a lot and don't grow my own food, I do very little gardening/DIY, and I play CPU-intensive computer games a fair bit which some might view as excess consumption of electricity through a non-essential activity (I don't like that way of thinking, but it's one area where others could apply it).

On the whole though I think my carbon footprint should be well below the national average.

[Gray-Wolf]

I think at present we are still only experiencing our grand/great grand parents contributions........ours will kick in later (if not overtaken by Mother N. step changing to the carbon cycle we had in the last 'greenhouse earth '56 to 40 million years ago) so we have time to offset our footprint by inventing the first household fussion generator....... well G.W. Bush was willing to bank on technology solving our ills so why not us????

Edited July 1, 2010 by Gray-Wolf

[Essan]

I'm not doing anything to reduce my carbon footprint.

Due to my preferred lifestyle it's already waaaaay lower than most people in this country and there's frankly little if anything I could practically do to reduce it further.

I don't drive, I don't fly, I recycle all I can, I rarely have the heating on even in winter, I try to buy British produced foodstuffs wherever practical and I've discovered how to operate the off switch so unlike most I can actually turn the lights off at night. None of which has anything to do with wanting to cut carbon emissions, just common logic and the fact that unlike most I don't have money to burn.

[Gray-Wolf]

I'd just like to clarify how this works then P.P.

I've heard lots about indo-China and how much CO2 they are now responsible for but this would seem to let the developed nations off the hook on 2 counts;

1/ We started the industrial revolution and so had a head start on CO2 production

2/ A fair proportion of the goods and services produced in the 'developing nations' are for consumption in the developed Nations.

I mean where is your car from P.P.? Did it , or it's components, take a long sea voyage to get here?

Do you include the Carbon footprint of all the goods and services you utilise over a year (every scrap of plastic/paper/tin/rubber/glass) esp. if they are sourced from a less developed (dirtier) producer and then sent on the dirtiest form of transport across half the world?

I take issue as it seems that the more disposable wonga you have the 'greener' you can afford to be but oft-times the more disposable wonga you have has roots in 'family' and those families will have out consumed many others through our rapid industrialisation and so have a larger 'family carbon footprint' than most others who were too poor to be able to afford to trash the planet.

We cannot deny our parents/grandparents contributions in all of this. Every developing nation should be allowed to 'spend' as much of our planet as we did on our way to our comforts and this thread merely encourages folk to score points off one another (not nice) about how they can 'afford' to be greener than others......not nice either.

We are a lead nation in CO2 pollution (over the past 150yrs) and a solar panel will not undo that fact.

Edited July 1, 2010 by shuggee
Stay on topic and stop sniping.

[shuggee]

My take on this is a combination of both energy efficiency and reducing emissions - all of them, including NO2 and other noxious gases. I don't have a car, and being gay will never have children - what a huge saving that generates

I'll just repost the title of thread as some people either don't read it, or have difficulty understanding it:

Are You Aware Of Your Own Carbon Footprint? What are you doing to try and reduce it?

[Gray-Wolf]

Will someone define a 'carbon footprint' please. It would appear to be little to do with the Carbon our families have produced that is above and beyond their 'natural' levels of production within the carbon cycle and it all has me a little lost.

I would suggest that I am fully aware of 'my' carbon footprint but that it includes my historic responsibilities (as a member of a country that started to 'mega pollute' before the rest), as well as my present usage.

And really why would I choose to view it otherwise? (unless I wish to appear less culpable in our current climate shift???)

When living with the disabled it is very difficult to 'minimise' your footprint in the way the able bodied are able to (if you don't self regulate your body temp you need the heating on/cooling fans on). The amount of 'waste' that comes with disability is enormous.

We have medical waste bins which are filled each week with spent syringes,pads,bags ,tubes,bottles etc and though they could be recycled are 'burnt' as 'medical waste' instead???

[johnholmes]

I think most of us understand that your case is somewhat different to the majority of us.

But I'm sure most would still like to see what you do in difficult circumstances in your own home?

hope that sounds reasonable?

[Paul]

Lol GW, you do like to confuse things don't you! (This is meant to be light hearted by the way!)

To me personal carbon footprint is car use, electricity use, food waste, rubbish waste, products you use etc. Ok you could talk about what you've done in the past but in truth that's fairly irrelevant at this point as there's nothing whatsoever that could be done about that.

I agree with Essan that for me reducing my carbon footprint isn't something I specifically do for the sake of reducing it, I just try to live efficiently as I hate wasting money and resources and see it as common sense not to.

[Gray-Wolf]

It is still very upsetting to be showing Jamie how and why to conserve,recycle and re-use when he sees the mountain of waste we send to burn each week.

Somehow I think the rest of us might be in Jamie's position of doing our bit yet seeing massive waste all around us that we are unable to either challenge or help drive change within.

We send our waste plastics, in ships, half way around the world for it to be 'processed' put into another ship and sailed half way around the world again in the form of goods for us to use (then recycle so it can be put into ships................)????

Surely our 'outsourcing' for the majority of our goods and services does have a 'cost' (in carbon) attached to it?

Clothing, electrical goods,toys,furniture all dragged half way around the planet, in the least 'green' transport on the planet, and we think our 'carbon savings' are meaningful??

Sorry Guys, teaching kiddies 'good practice' is all well and good but to believe our efforts will make a difference? Am I just being bleak or am I being realistic?

Every year we break the IPCC predictions on CO2 levels, every time we hear how woefully short of our CO2 targets we are, every "Worse than we thought...." paper I read makes me wonder who else actually cares? Certainly not the folk in the positions to truly effect change in the way we run our planet or we would surely be doing it and not still twittering about it?

I am a firm believer in 'think global act local' but that should include all of society, businesses,Govt, and citizens and it seems we focus on Joe Public whilst business and govt are allowed to be more tokenistic about it all.Maybe I could buy a few Tibetans CO2 allowances and get that Hummer I fancy..........

Edited July 1, 2010 by Gray-Wolf

[Pennine Ten Foot Drifts]

Ah yes G-W, think global act local. We all like to think our small contributions help, and we've all been brought up on principles of 'from little acorns...' and 'we've got to start somewhere' and so on. And yet the really massive problems appear to remain, unchecked and undiminished. On that score I tend to share PPs view re. peak oil, that it isn't going to be too long now when global transport is going to become so hideously expensive, and such things as plastic so costly to manufacture new, that simple economics is going to force us to revert to a much more 'local' existence.

And sometimes I think you do miss one point - fun - I get a good amount of personal satisfaction from 'treading lightly', and being 'anti-consumer'. For example, it makes me smile that as a family of six we rarely fill one black bin bag in a week, or that we haven't bought any new furniture or big electrical goods for many years now, (try Freecycle, it's brilliant !), or that the combined value of our two cars is less than £1500, and one runs on bio-diesel, (sorry about having two cars, but like Jethro we're rural - trip to work by car 40 mins, same trip by public transport 2 hrs 10 mins - and my job means I'm away from home regularly so family needs one as well). In many ways doing that stuff is fun, and flicking two fingers up to 'conventional living' at the same time !!!

Of course the flip-side of all this, if people stopped buying stuff except when they absolutely had to and got stuff mended instead of buying new wherever possible, would be the very rapid disintegration of the current economic system, and would that not be a disastrous, traumatic and extremely painful thing for the vast majority of people ?

[johnholmes]

It is still very upsetting to be showing Jamie how and why to conserve,recycle and re-use when he sees the mountain of waste we send to burn each week.

Somehow I think the rest of us might be in Jamie's position of doing our bit yet seeing massive waste all around us that we are unable to either challenge or help drive change within.

We send our waste plastics, in ships, half way around the world for it to be 'processed' put into another ship and sailed half way around the world again in the form of goods for us to use (then recycle so it can be put into ships................)????

Surely our 'outsourcing' for the majority of our goods and services does have a 'cost' (in carbon) attached to it?

Clothing, electrical goods,toys,furniture all dragged half way around the planet, in the least 'green' transport on the planet, and we think our 'carbon savings' are meaningful??

Sorry Guys, teaching kiddies 'good practice' is all well and good but to believe our efforts will make a difference? Am I just being bleak or am I being realistic?

Every year we break the IPCC predictions on CO2 levels, every time we hear how woefully short of our CO2 targets we are, every "Worse than we thought...." paper I read makes me wonder who else actually cares? Certainly not the folk in the positions to truly effect change in the way we run our planet or we would surely be doing it and not still twittering about it?

I am a firm believer in 'think global act local' but that should include all of society, businesses,Govt, and citizens and it seems we focus on Joe Public whilst business and govt are allowed to be more tokenistic about it all.Maybe I could buy a few Tibetans CO2 allowances and get that Hummer I fancy..........

I hope I do appreciate your problems GW but a couple of questions , well 4.

Is your house fully insulated, roof, walls etc?

do you use the supposed low energy light bulbs?

do you turn off all things like, radio, tv etc rather than leave on stand by?

do you compost that which can be composted?

only minor things but I'd be interested in your answers if you feel able to give a response to my questions?

[Gray-Wolf]

Hi John,

Walls insulated,roof double insulated (and then boarded and filled with 8 yrs of discarded toys...grrrr),

We have food waste collections but we also compost (that which doesn't fit in the dog....which is a lot seeing as she's diddy).

I do my rounds at night but some things are left running so that night our night crew have some 'luxury'.

I don't think we have any 'normal bulbs' in the house, maybe Jamies lamp (daylight bulb so he is able to see better) and the snake/Gheko's lamps.

As with many folk there is so much more that we could do but we cannot finance such lifestyle changes (heat pumps ,turbines,solar panels,'leccy car etc)

Edited July 2, 2010 by Gray-Wolf

[pottyprof]

Thanks for getting there in the end GW.

[Methuselah]

Living in a flat, not driving, not eating out much, hardly ever using the heating etc., I'd say that my CF is quite low (most of the time). One caveat, due to the persistent hot weather, may be the future use of Odoureaters...

[Gray-Wolf]

Thanks for the patience P.P.!

Pete ,I too am glad I live at the other end to my feet!!!...........maybe we should be issued with our own Mary Mag and a bottle of scented oil????

Well done PTFD! This is a good example of the satisfaction doing all you feel you can will bring! Though the L.A. here has made garbage and re-cycling very easy (lots of bins and bags) there are still those who choose just to wheelie bin everything. Surely there must be the opposite feeling for them each week as the bags and bins go out ? Do they feel 'smart' about not being seen to care or do their bit?

I'm sure we live in a 'stop gap' period where we muddle through whilst trying to serve 2 masters (oil and environment) and we will only make meaningful step in the right direction when forced too to do so (when oil runs out or climate starts it's mega impacts)........sot of a "If it ain't broke why fix it???" stance. Well ,it is broke (both oil and environment) but we still argue the toss about both whilst compounding the damage.

[vortex_liam]

I recycle all i can, cycle to work,turn lights on/off. BUT I do have alot of bbqs (even in rain) and bonfires.

[The PIT]

My Carbon foot print is probably pretty poor. I have too keep the house warm for my elderly mother. I have too drive to work just in case I get called home I used to walk. However I do recycle as much as I can although the latest "council improvements" will curtail this quite a bit probably resulting in more bonfires and less paper recycling.

[Guest]

We try here and there but I think my family and I could do a lot more. I'm fairly mean with electricity but that's more from a point of view of saving on bills rather than saving the planet. BoyCatch's school seem to be teaching them a lot about the environment which is good in a way, but I sometimes wonder who will break it to them that windmills alone cannot power the UK.

Others have mentioned recycling; does anyone know how environmentally friendly this actually is? It would be interesting to find out.

[Gray-Wolf]

Others have mentioned recycling; does anyone know how environmentally friendly this actually is? It would be interesting to find out.

We used to know ,CMD, when it was newspaper bails at school but today?

We know most of our plastics end up hauled back to China to be recycled into Maccie D' Toys but how 'green' is that?

I get the feelin' that pretty soon we'll be finding uses 'locally' for our 'waste' as ,come that time, it;ll have a value to us!

[sunny starry skies]

interesting question P.P.! At present there seems little I could do to reduce my carbon footprint in my basic lifestyle, bar one thing. I live in a modern flat with relatively few exterior walls and don't need the heating 6 months of the year. Our recycling is such that our wheelie bin goes out every 2-3 weeks only half-full. If we left it longer it would stink:bad: . But that's because our lifestyle doesn't generate much rubbish rather than being holier-than-thou! We do recycle what we can (glass, paper, plastics), though I share G-W's, and other's reservations about where the plastics etc are recycled and what the carbon footprint of that is. Condensing boiler fitted, small car occasionally used - I cycle or bus to work, but I do fly on work commitments once or twice a year, and occasional holidays, and so I suspect my carbon footprint is not the lowest here! I can't fit solar panels (hell up here I'm not sure it's worth it ), We could improve the 'local produce', though for the most part we do what we can.

So as far as I can tell the main thing I could do would be fewer flights.

sss

[johnholmes]

Hi John,

Walls insulated,roof double insulated (and then boarded and filled with 8 yrs of discarded toys...grrrr),

We have food waste collections but we also compost (that which doesn't fit in the dog....which is a lot seeing as she's diddy).

I do my rounds at night but some things are left running so that night our night crew have some 'luxury'.

I don't think we have any 'normal bulbs' in the house, maybe Jamies lamp (daylight bulb so he is able to see better) and the snake/Gheko's lamps.

As with many folk there is so much more that we could do but we cannot finance such lifestyle changes (heat pumps ,turbines,solar panels,'leccy car etc)

thanks GW, only just noticed your post