OK, I have started this post with a title that just looks as though I’m looking for excuses, doesn’t it? Allow me the chance to explain myself in my usual, long-winded fashion.
Prashant Vaze’s ‘The Economical Environmentalist’ is to blame. It fell, almost from the Heavens, into my sticky paws just as I was looking for another seemingly hare-brained scheme to occupy my free time (Richard – and I imagine, the landlord – being less than happy to allow me to convert the front garden into a chicken coop).
First thing I thought – well, I do really well, don’t I? I don’t eat red meat, I don’t fly anywhere, I turn everything off at the wall, we rarely have more than one light on in the entire house, I am a veritable paragon of Earthy Worthiness.
Wrong.
Well, according to the WWF and ActoncO2, that is. My personal carbon footprint currently stands at an ice-cap melting 7.25 tons. According to WWF’s online Footprint Calculator, that equates to 1.94 planets. Eeek.
Here are the scary statistics:
20% – food
13% – travel
28% – home
39% – stuff
Food
I eat organic, free range chicken once a week. I eat responsibly sourced, sustainable fish once or twice a week. I haven’t eaten a burger, or a kebab, or a bacon sandwich for the past 20 years. There is, of course, nowhere on the calculator to point this out to them (in a slightly smug fashion). I try to buy organic milk and dairy - and don’t even drink milk, it’s mostly for the children. I try to buy seasonal local produce, which can be difficult when you only have one greengrocer within walking distance; so I’m afraid I do rely a little too heavily on my weekly supermarket shop. There, I do look for Scottish produce, though I am depressingly aware that the ‘local’ carrots have probably been driven to Lands End for washing, to Newcastle for bagging, then to a distribution depot in Watford before appearing magically on the shelves of the supermarket. The WWF don’t even give me any Brownie points for having some seed potatoes chitting on my windowsill or the fact that I don’t buy air-freighted fruit and vegetables (OK, except early season grapes).
Travel
This was an odd one for me. We have a car, yes. A medium sized (1.6 litre) beast which is 10 years old and which gets used every day for Richard’s commute into work. I can’t drive the bloody thing – I can’t drive – but I did fess up to the calculator that I’m probably in said beast for an hour or so a week. You know, get chauffeured to the supermarket, that kind of thing. As this was a personal calculation, rather than a household calculation, I was somewhat alarmed to see the percentage as high as 13% when it feels as though I walk everywhere.
Home
Much of this is, sadly, unchangeable by us due to the fact that we live in a furnished, rented house. Our fridge freezer was present at the Last Supper, our washing machine is not much newer, and the boiler is so old I’m expecting to find a horde of Saxon coins underneath it. But we do what we can – the usual cliches, really – only boil the water you need in the kettle, turn everything off when not in use (I frequently turn things off when they are in use, which gives me a little thrill), put energy-saving lightbulbs here, there and everywhere, and wear 3 jumpers instead of turning up the heating (which, incidentally, is only one in one room). Sadly, however, I don’t see my landlord coming round gleefully wielding a catalogue of A+ grade appliances and a lovely FSC Wood burning stove any time soon. Or letting me stick a wind-turbine on the roof.
Stuff
Boy, do I resent this! I BOUGHT A FECKING TELLY. Ours broke. It was ancient. Yes, I might have bought a TV – a small, modest one, not some ginormous monstrosity and, yes, I confess to buying Richard a digital camera for Christmas (he had been an awfully good boy); but we don’t buy ’stuff’. Not like other people buy stuff, anyway. My make-up bag should probably be labelled hazardous, and only approached by men in white cover-alls, we don’t buy clothes unless desperate (nursery must think Ellis’ mum has a job as a scarecrow) - I couldn’t tell you the last time we bought a ‘frippery’. OK, my house is full of ‘things’, but I’m amazed how much stuff we have accumulated through generous friends and family giving away things that are perfectly functional and, of course, facilities such as Freecycle which has filled up the spaces made by, well, giving things away on Freecycle.
So, annoyed I may be. Somewhat less sanctimonious, definitely. Ready for a challenge – yes, I do think I am. In the next post, I shall devise (probably in mind-numbing detail) my cunning plan to do something about my carbon footprint. So there.
Thank God for Prashant Vaze, who – whilst bombarbing me with facts, figures, offsetting data stats and scary looking diagrams – is still keeping me sane. And I shall sleep more soundly in my bed tonight knowing that the cheap Spanish tomatoes actually have a lower footprint that UK tomatoes grown in heated greenhouses. Mr Vaze, I thank you.
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