The history of the ‘carbon footprint’ is a complicated one. The term itself refers to the total carbon emissions of all your everyday activities – your drive to work, the food you eat, how you heat your home. But did you know who first popularised it? Over two decades ago, the oil giant BP, one of the highest-emitting companies in the world, promoted the snappy phrase as part of a marketing campaign, with the underlying goal of pushing the responsibility for reducing emissions onto the individual. Over time, the idiom has been co-opted by gigantic corporations in order to divert attention from their similarly gigantic greenhouse gas emissions, and shift the blame onto the everyman.
The average person in the UK has a carbon footprint of about 5.5 tonnes per year – global greenhouse gas emissions are about 50 billion tonnes. So efforts to lower your personal impact on climate change will likely be a drop in the ocean. In the grand scheme of things, your personal carbon footprint, no matter how small it is, will not have a massively tangible impact on the climate crisis – even if you follow all these actions to a tee, your overall impact will still be minimal. Preventing the worst of the climate crisis will require systemic, policy-based change, and many of the biggest sources of emissions come from processes over which the average individual has zero control. You’ve probably heard the statistic that 70 per cent of all emissions since 1988 were released by just 100 companies.
But that doesn't mean you should throw in the towel and only travel by private jet. Aligning your everyday actions with your values can have a ripple effect: it can encourage others around you to take action too, which can actually lead to real change. One survey found that 75 per cent of respondents had changed their attitudes to flying and climate change as a result of people they knew who were flying less due to climate concerns, and half said they were flying less.
And go beyond personal actions like forgoing plastic straws – direct your energy towards fighting for systemic change. Take part in climate activism: join protests, sign petitions, talk to your friends and family. Use your vote: one study found that voting Conservative in the last Canadian election effectively tripled your carbon footprint overnight. Contact your local political representative and tell them why you think action on climate change is important (here’s a template for the UK.) Donate to effective climate charities. Divest from fossil fuels: move your assets to a bank that doesn’t support the fossil fuel industry.
And remember: this burden is not shared equally. For example, the average carbon footprint of someone in the US is around 16 tonnes a year – someone in Rwanda emits just under one tonne. The richest ten per cent of the world – those who earn over $38,000 (£27,545) – is responsible for half of global emissions between 1990 and 2015. All of these actions will have the most impact if taken by the wealthy, who are overwhelmingly the highest emitters.
Fly less
Flying accounts for a huge proportion of an individual’s annual carbon footprint – particularly if you’re a habitual or long-haul flyer. A long-haul return flight between London and New York emits 1.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide – over three times the amount that someone living in Ghana will emit in a year. And while many airlines offer the option to “offset” your flight, the consensus is that offsets, which outsource the emissions reduction to other sectors, don’t actually have much of an impact: one analysis found that less than five per cent of offsets in 2020 removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
How much carbon would taking a train instead of flying really save? EcoPassenger provides a comprehensive guide to different modes of transport and their various carbon impacts. For example, from London to Budapest, the train journey – albeit taking a gruelling 21 hours – produces the least carbon emissions, at 45.8kg of CO2. This is exceeded by both car (227.3kg) and plane (224.7kg). Train expert The Man in Seat 61, has calculated the carbon reductions involved in taking trains over planes for popular routes across the world. He found that travelling from London to Paris by Eurostar instead of plane results in slicing carbon emissions by 91 per cent.
However, while train over bus may generally hold true, it can depend on where you’re travelling. The National Geographic tracked how much carbon would be expelled by different methods of transport between Toronto and New York and the results are somewhat surprising. An hour and a half plane journey is the least energy efficient mode, but the train forfeited first place to the humble Greyhound bus. This is because the Amtrak train releases a high volume of diesel fuel emissions. In Europe and other places, trains are more environmentally friendly. For example, the Eurostar is one of the cleanest ways to travel, producing just 0.006kg CO2 per km per passenger.
Boats are another mode of transport where counterintuitive logic can seep in. While boats might generally be considered fairly environmentally friendly, this isn’t always the case. In fact, a study found that a certain type of boat, the Large RoPax passenger ferry, was actually more polluting than taking a first class flight (0.39kg of CO2 per Km per person compared to 0.32kg CO2 per km per person). However, a different type of foot passenger ferry releases much lower levels, about 0.18kg of CO2 per km, and is ranked as one of the cleanest ways to travel
If you do have to fly, make sure to pick economy class, because the carbon burden is shared among more passengers. Flying first class is associated with carbon emissions nine times more than economy.
Go plant-based
The food you eat has a massive impact on the climate. Food production is responsible for a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, and meat and dairy are the two biggest culprits, accounting for around 14.5 per cent. The Lancet medical journal published a study that called on Europeans to reduce their red meat consumption by 77 per cent in order to avoid “catastrophic damage to the planet”.
What would happen if the whole world went vegan? A study from Oxford University estimated there would be a 49 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from food production if we all followed our vegan friend’s advice. On an individual basis, research showed that a vegan’s diet is the most carbon light (creating 6.4 pounds CO2 per day), while a diet heavy in meat is also the heaviest in carbon (15.8 pounds CO2-eq per day). While different estimates vary, it’s generally agreed that you could cut your carbon footprint by around 20 per cent by switching to a vegan diet.
You may have heard from the Well, Actually faction of society that vegetables are more carbon intensive to produce than certain types of meat. However, this wisdom rests on a per calorie or weight calculation, and the inane assumption that someone might binge on a ribeye steak’s worth of lettuce. In fact, a 2018 study by Oxford University that looked at 40 common foods and their greenhouse gas emissions couldn’t find any animal products that were less environmentally taxing than their plant-based alternatives.
But if you can’t face going fully meat free, the best meats to cut down on are from sheep and cows, the animals that produce the most atmosphere frying methane. Research from Oxford University found that if every family in the UK swapped out a red meat-based meal for a plant-based alternative just once a week, the environmental impact would be equivalent to taking 16 million cars off the road.
Eating local – meaning food grown near you that hasn’t travelled millions of miles – actually doesn’t massively impact your carbon footprint, despite what you may have heard. This is because transporting food doesn’t play a significant role in a food’s final carbon footprint. An analysis from Our World in Data found that transport accounts for only six per cent of emissions from food, while producing dairy, meat and eggs accounted for 83 per cent.
And following all these rules is pretty much redundant if you then go on to waste food; a meta-analysis from 2018 found that food waste accounted for six per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. “Around the world, and in the UK, we waste over a quarter of the food that's produced and all of that food has a carbon footprint. Things like milk for instance, which we waste huge volumes of, have a pretty high carbon footprint,” says Reay. “By not overbuying, and not over serving at mealtimes, and keeping to use by dates, we can reduce that food waste and start having a really significant impact on our carbon footprint.”
Make your home more energy-efficient
Homes make up about 15 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in the UK. So if you’re looking to shrink your carbon footprint, start at home.
To reduce your house’s carbon footprint, the most effective thing to do is switching to green heating and electricity. But understandably, this may be too costly for a lot of people. The next best thing to do is make sure your home is well-insulated. Trapping heat effectively is a surefire way to trim down your energy usage – the biggest producer of carbon emissions in the home. Make sure heat drains like gusty lofts and window frames are fully stoppered up. Beyond this you can make additional efforts to draught proof your house – by blocking the edges of doors and windows for example. Replacing an inefficient gas boiler can yield important energy gains, and another tip is replacing halogen bulbs with more energy efficient LED bulbs.
Drive less
When it comes to short distances, defaulting to a car quickly racks up your carbon output. For distances over a thousand kilometers, driving alone actually has a higher carbon footprint per kilometer than flying the same distance. Going carless for one year could reduce your emissions by about 2.4 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
But for many, it’s important to acknowledge that alternatives are limited: for people based in more rural areas, or those underserved by public transport, a car might be the only option to get around. But for city dwellers, there is generally always a better, more carbon-friendly alternative. Weigh up your options: can you take a bus, tube or tram? Walk? Cycle? If you are in ownership of a car, you can spread your carbon burden by inviting people to share your commute.
If you are a frequent car user, consider switching to an electric car. Although the electricity you feed into your vehicle will be partly produced by non-renewable energy, electric vehicles (EVs) are much more efficient, meaning overall CO2 emissions are lower. The lifetime emissions for an EV in Europe are between 66 and 69 per cent lower compared to that of a fossil fuel-powered car.
However, the embedded carbon of a new electric vehicle has to be taken into account. The CO2 produced in manufacturing the car might be higher than the lifetime emissions of the vehicle depending on how often you use it. It might be better to instead maintain your current vehicle and aim to cut down your usage.
Buy less
Any new purchase comes with an embedded carbon price tag. “The embodied carbon in everything we buy, particularly single use or throw away stuff, has a real, big impact on our climate,” says Reay. This is especially pertinent for items we only use sporadically, for example lawnmowers or power drills.
“If you think about your phone, it's all the components – all those metal and plastic parts – and all of the energy that's got into it,” Reay says. “It has quite a big carbon footprint, and we're buying a new one each year.” Indeed, Apple has released figures showing that 80 per cent of a product’s carbon footprint is wrapped up in its production process, rather than the energy it consumes once it’s completed. Planned obsolescence means that we’re cycling through new handsets faster than ever before, with many of the discards simply being thrown in the bin. Reuse and reduce should form the pillars of your sustainable ideology.
And fast fashion – exemplified by the likes of £5 dresses from Primark and Zara’s weekly stock rotation – is hugely harmful to the planet. Aside from the production process itself – which expels 1.2bn tonnes of CO2 a year (more than the aviation and shipping industries combined) – the wear-once-then-toss attitude permeating high street fashion means that racks of flimsy clothes are quickly transformed into one million tonnes of waste a year, much of will be incinerated or added to landfill. Although difficult to do an exact calculation on the amount of carbon saved in buying second hand versus buying new (this would need to take into account factors such as the intensity of the production process, and how many times the piece of clothing had already been worn), research from WRAP found that extending the average life of clothes by just three months up to two years and five months would result in a five to ten per cent reduction in carbon, water and waste footprints of the items.
Although once the biggest doctrines of your classic eco-warrior, recycling only goes so far – three years of recycling can be wiped out by a return flight to Berlin from London. So it’s tempering our voracious consumerism that can make the biggest impact. And when it comes to brands or labels that brand themselves as “sustainable”, keep in mind that the most sustainable option is just buying less stuff.
Have fewer children
This one is controversial. Yes, having fewer children does in fact lower your overall carbon footprint. One study estimates that having one fewer child is estimated to save as much as 58.6 tonnes of carbon emissions a year (if the potential future emissions of a descendant were calculated based on historical rates and heredity). But the same co-author of that study has said that if you want to have children, go ahead and do it. The timeframe to stop the worst effects of climate change is so tight, reducing population will not be how we’re going to solve the climate crisis.
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
