“How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything” by Mike Berners-Lee
Summary
“How Bad Are Bananas?” is a guide that touches upon various aspects of carbon footprint. It contains estimates and tips, but also shows the bigger picture.
While reading, you are forced to create further connections that spread far beyond the carbon cost of production or transport of an item. It’s as informative, as it is mindblowing.
There is no single answer to the climate change issue. But the estimates provided in the book help you make more informative decisions. Next time you’ll wander around a shop looking for some cheese, the carbon footprint of milk will definitely pop into your head.
That’s how this book works. It’s not supposed to tell you exactly what to do. It’s supposed to make you think about the little things that matter. And those big things that are not the only ones to blame for our current situation. It gives you a broader perspective, a chance to dig a bit deeper into those slogans that you see every day.
There are lots of numbers involved. But they are presented in a way that builds a scale in your head, instead of overwhelming you. The research done for this book is truly impressive. However, it’s absolutely not necessary (I would even say ‘unhealthy’) to try and remember those numbers and percentages. That’s just very much not the point.
There’s a catch though. If you genuinely want to know, learn and change, that’s a great food for thought for you there. But, if you bless your ignorance, this book might make your life a bit more worrisome.
The thing about climate change though, is that the choice here is not only yours. As you’re about to learn, even some of the simplest tasks we do, they all matter too. We all have a carbon impact, which means we all can make a difference.
A quick guide to carbon & carbon footprints
Keywords:
- Carbon - here, used as a synonym for all greenhouse gases that cause global warming
- Footprint - here, meaning the impact something has on the harmful emissions
- Carbon footprint - here, used to estimate the total impact that a certain activity has on the climate
- CO₂e - carbon dioxide equivalent - the impact of all greenhouse gases (methane, nitrous oxide, etc.) that were emitted by a certain activity combined and expressed as the amount of carbon dioxide that would have the same impact
- Carbon toe-print - looking at a certain aspect that creates harmful emissions, but ignoring the others
- Direct emissions - include the emissions resulting from activities directly related to an item, such as manufacturing or transport
- Indirect emissions - include emission caused by extracting the oil used to make plastic or fuel
- High-altitude emissions - fuel burned by planes, which are thought to have around twice as big of an impact, compared to emitted at ground level
Tags: carbon carbon footprint CO2e carbon toe-print direct emissions indirect emissions high-altitude emissions
Chapter: Under 10 grams
- Spam email messages cause around 20 mln tonnes of CO₂e per year
- Carbon-wise, reusable bags are only better when you reuse them at least 5 times
- Web searches cost 1.3 mln tonnes of CO₂e a year
You can’t even walk through a door for free anymore…
You might be surprised to hear that even such a basic activity could cost you carbon emissions, but it can. It highly depends on the kind of doors you’re using and the difference in temperature between the inside and the outside of the building, but your emissions generated by opening large electronic doors could generate as much as 84 g of CO₂e.
Sending emails is another interesting topic.
All the emails you’ve received during a single year could amount to 135 kg of CO₂e. And those long emails with many tedious attachments, each one of them can emit over ten times as much carbon equivalents as a plain email, with a normal email emitting around 4 g of CO₂e.
A single text message might be the least hurtful thing mentioned in the book.
You pay about 0.014 g of CO₂e for one text. That makes it even less polluting than a pint of tap water (0.14 g of CO₂e).
Tags: email 20 mln tonnes text message tap water
Chapter: 10 to 100 grams
- Don’t misjudge bananas
- Watching TV for an hour a day for a year equals to a 45-mile drive in a petrol car
- Boil only the amount of water that you actually need
The famous banana mystery.
Spoiler alert: bananas are not bad! They are great value for carbon cost. Not only emitting only about 80 g CO₂e each, but also providing tasty nutrition. We’re talking only 140 calories, full of vitamin C, B6 and fibre.
To compare, an orange emits 90 g of CO₂e. But that doesn’t mean an orange juice is guilt-free. One litre of orange juice has a carbon footprint of 6 kilos of oranges (around 3 kg CO₂e), which is much more than would actually be needed to make one litre of juice. That’s because of an inefficient production process.
When it comes to watching TV, it all depends on the type and size of the screen. A 42-inch plasma screen seems to be the least environment-friendly option, emitting 220 g of CO₂e per hour. However, before you go change your old TV, at a point where you’ve had your old screen for a while, it might be better to stick to it. Taking a new one means paying the carbon cost included within its production, which might turn out to reduce the benefits of a less-emitting TV screen.
Tags: banana orange juice watching TV
Chapter: 100 grams to 1 kilo
- A large latte costs 340 g of CO₂e
- Two and a half years of using disposable nappies by one child equals having 2500 large cappuccinos
- 18 miles by intercity rail cost as much CO₂e as one cheeseburger
The worst part of drinking tea or coffee can be milk.
If you add milk to your tea or coffee, then it actually makes up two-thirds of the carbon footprint of your beverage. It might be a good idea to replace the milk in your drink with a biscuit snack.
A mile by a London bus is equivalent to 150 g of CO₂e per passenger, while a mile by London Underground is 160 g CO₂e. Travelling in a minibus somewhere in La Paz could be as much as 15 g of CO₂e per passenger (around 300 g per bus). And the most efficient train option per mile is intercity standard class, equivalent to 150 g CO₂e.
But the thing is that 5 miles by the underground is equal to a pint of milk. You might want to rethink that biscuit option…
Tags: coffee milk bus train underground
Chapter: 1 kilo to 10 kilos
- On average, a paperback book equals to 1 kg of CO₂e
- Beer has a bigger carbon footprint than wine (slightly, but still)
- Avoid asparagus during winter
Let them eat bread!
1 kg of CO₂e is the price of 800 g loaf of bread. With the calories you get from it and its low carbohydrate content, it is worth eating! Mind the word “eating”. Unfortunately it gets thrown away all too often. It’s not entirely our fault (storage is tricky), but buying smaller loaves will definitely help.
If you take a bath every day, it could result in as much as 950 kg of CO₂e per year. It depends on the kind of heater you use and how filled the bathtub is. With a big family and lots of baths, the number could get up to 1 tonne CO₂e a year. But generally, it’s better to use an efficient gas boiler than an electric heater.
How about eating a cheeseburger every day for a year? That’s an equivalent of 910 kg CO₂e. Which has the same impact of a 1500-mile trip by car. A nice alternative to that would be a vegetarian burger. A veggie burger is 2.5 times less harmful than a cheeseburger.
But the unquestionable winner in this deadly race is beef, being the most carbon-expensive component of a burger. 108 g of beef cost 1910 g of CO₂e.
Tags: paperback book beer wine bread bath burger
Chapter: 10 kilos to 100 kilos
- One lamb leg is equivalent to a bowl of porridge
- Cremation costs 80 kg of CO₂e
- Your next shoes - probably Crocs
If you talk on the phone for a minute, you use the carbon equivalent of an apple (57 g CO₂e).
Using a phone is not that bad by itself. But those small things add up. One hour a day for a year, that’s more than a tonne of CO₂e.
Midnight cheese? 250 g of hard cheese equals 12 kg of carrots! When choosing between different cheeses, go for the soft ones. They didn’t use as much milk as the hard ones. But it would be best to reduce cheese consumption altogether.
A night in a hotel could be as much as 60 kg CO₂e. That includes TV, big breakfast and heating. But, if played well, it could also be as little as 3 kg CO₂e, with low-meat breakfast and adjusting your own room temperature.
Tags: porridge shoes phone cheese stay at a hotel
Chapter: 100 kilos to 1 tonne
- When next time travelling from London to Glasgow, try cycling
- A fancy necklace can cost even 400 kg CO₂e
- The new computer lying on your desk already costs a trip by plane from Glasgow to Madrid
It takes 10 hours every day for 5 years for your computer electricity emissions to catch up with its carbon cost of production.
Similarly to your TV, it’s probably best to stick to your old one, instead of buying a more efficient one. That’s because the carbon footprint of the manufacturing of computers is the main factor that contributes to their climate impact.
The environment also isn’t a fan of mortgages.
It’s all about looking at other, less intuitive contributors. It’s about offices, the computers inside them, heating, cooling, cleaning and even lunches! It’s about the whole industry that taking a mortgage supports.
Tags: travelling necklace computer mortgage
Chapter: 1 tonne to 10 tonnes
- A UK person costs 15 tonnes of CO₂e per year
- A heart bypass operation is an equivalent of 1.1 tonnes CO₂e
- Don’t buy photovoltaic panels having only profit in mind (as you might be surprised)
Fertilisers have two faces.
One of them is that they provide the nitrogen that plants need to live and grow, which is very useful. But the other one is that they’re often applied inefficiently, which results in either soil not being saturated with nitrogen. Or the abundance of it isn’t actually used by plants and can even inhibit their growth.
When it comes to photovoltaic panels, there’s a lot to take into account. But assuming that everything works out fine, you’ll only get two-thirds of your money back.
Also, bear in mind that the panels don’t last forever. They’ll probably be at least 20% less efficient in 20 years time. There’s little chance they’ll work for more that 40 years in total.
Tags: heart bypass fertilisers photovoltaic panels
Chapter: 10 tonnes to 100 tonnes
- Building a new, two story house uses 80 tonnes of CO₂e
- A car crash has a carbon cost as well
Installing wind turbines might be better for you than the environment.
Compared to carbon savings and government spendings, the person installing the turbines is best-off. The impact could be bigger though, if the government invested in big offshore farms, instead of smaller, household turbines.
Tags: house car crash wind turbines
Chapter: 100 tonnes to 1 million tonnes
- Having a child might be the biggest carbon choice in your life
- The only individual action that beats having a child carbon-wise is starting a bushfire
A university costs about 72,000 tonnes of CO₂e a year.
This includes electricity, water, and various items that need to be purchased. The biggest contributor is gas and electricity usage. But staff business travel (especially by planes) scores quite high as well.
What impact could giving each person in the UK a banana have? The answer is: the same as a space shuttle flight. Those might be the weirdest two sentences you’ve ever read, but that’s the best estimate we have. Either of these activities cost no less than 4,600 tonnes of CO₂e.
We all know that deforestation is bad. How bad though? A hectare of deforestation is an equivalent of 500 tonnes CO₂e, which is roughly equal to going around the world 28 times by car.
Tags: children university deforestation
Chapter: 1 million tonnes and beyond
- All the volcanoes in the world produce less than 1% of population’s emissions
- The UK costs about 862 mln tonnes CO₂e per year
- The world’s data centres use one-seventh of UK’s carbon footprint
Do you know what black carbon is?
It’s an element of soot and it’s thought to be the second most impactful cause of global warming, right after carbon dioxide. It not only amplifies the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere, but it also makes snow and ice darker, which results in them absorbing more heat from the sun.
But it has this one good quality - it doesn’t stick around in the atmosphere for long. So, if we stop releasing it, we will quickly be able to see an effect.
What about the world?
The world we live in currently emits about 50 billion tonnes of CO₂e every year. Methane and nitrous oxide are other key players, apart from carbon dioxide and black carbon.
Methane mostly comes from animal and plant farming, as well as processing of fuels and wastes. While nitrous oxide comes from fertilisers and manure.
Tags: volcano black carbon world methane
Chapter: More about food
When thinking about food, we need to take into account factors, such as transport, refrigeration, packaging, but also food waste.
We waste around one-quarter of all the food we buy. That’s not only a waste of money, but also all the resources used to produce, process and transport that food.
Some low-carbon tips: Eat what you buy Reduce meat and dairy Buy seasonal products Recycle your packaging
Most of the year in the UK, beetroot and broccoli are a safe bet. Also, go for apples and bananas. More exotic fruit can also be low carbon if they were shipped by boat or stored.
Tags: food beetroot broccoli apples bananas
Chapter: Some more information
- Climate change is indeed a big issue
- Looking for solutions to make your everyday life more carbon efficient is worth it
- It’s a good idea to make sure your loft is well isolated
- Investing in wind farms - payback in 15 years