October 2007
Being Green Isn’t all Black And White
We all try to do our bit to help the environment. We all know that now matter how much we do, we can always do more.
Surveys commonly reveal that we have a strong desire to "act greener", but that our actions often do not meet our good intentions. Anything from a lack of facilities for recycling, to being dulled by a Big Brother method of encouraging greener living have been blamed for such lack of action.
Therefore it surely follows that the best way to improve how green we are as a society is to promote more action. After all what is never in doubt is that certain action can only benefit the environment; we all know for example that walking to the shops is better than driving. We are told this so often that it must be right. Well perhaps not.
Some strongly held green beliefs have been called in to question recently. The Rail Safety and Standards Board recently announced that catching a diesel train is now twice as polluting as travelling by car for an average family. The Government has suggested that paper bags are worse for the environment than plastic because of the extra energy needed to manufacture and transport them.
Perhaps most surprisingly, Chris Goodall, author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, suggests that walking does more than driving to cause global warming. Goodall suggests that food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance.
The sums were based on the greenhouse gases created by intensive beef production. "Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles adds about 0.9 kg of CO2 to the atmosphere," Goodall said, a calculation based on the Government’s official fuel emission figures. "If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You’d need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving."
What if, instead of beef, the walker drank a glass of milk? The average person would need to drink three quarters of a pint to recover the calories used in the walk. Modern dairy farming emits the equivalent of 1.2kg of CO2 to produce the milk, still more pollution than the car journey.
Mr Goodall suggests that food is more important to Britain’s greenhouse emissions than aircraft, with cows generating more emissions than aircraft. He suggests that the publicity which aircraft is receiving would be better directed at the food industry. "We need urgently to work out how to reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of our foodstuffs" he says.
Although meat production is a large culprit, it is not the only area for improvement, with the food industry estimated to be responsible for a sixth of an individual’s carbon emissions. Britain is one of the worst culprits. Goodall continues, "we have industrialised our food production. We use an enormous amount of processed food, compared to most countries. Three quarters of supermarkets’ energy is to refrigerate and freeze food prepared elsewhere. A chilled ready meal is a perfect example of where the energy is wasted. You make the meal, then use an enormous amount of energy to chill it and keep it chilled through warehousing and storage."
Although changing your diet to one of cereals and pulses would make a large impact on your carbon footprint, it is unlikely to appeal to many people. However looking at reducing your purchases from the supermarket and of anything that has travelled a long way is a good start.
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