Two Feet are Better than One

From a consumer standpoint, carbon footprints are like walking, you can go much further with two feet than on one.

Last month Coca-Cola sparked a little food fight in the U.K. when they published green-house-gas (GHG) emissions of their core products. Coke was immediately compared to the footprint of Innocent's fruit smoothies. Innocent was the first U.K. beverage company, working with Carbon Trust, to publish its footprint.

According to the numbers, a ml of Coke emits 38% less GHGs than a ml of Innocent smoothie:

• A 330ml can of Coke embodies the equivalent of 170g of carbon dioxide (CO2e).


• A 250ml bottle of Innocent mango and passion fruit smoothie has a carbon footprint of 209g.

Innocent questioned whether it is fair to compare a product made of crushed fruit and packaged in 100% recycled plastic to carbonated, sugar water in a partly recycled aluminum can. Several bloggers also didn't think it was "comparing apples with apples".

Is the comparison fair? That's funny. I agree that they both aren't apples. They are both discretionary beverages and convenience foods. But let's compare the smoothie to an apple. If we assume that roughly 85% of the weight of the smoothie is fruit (the rest being bottle and possibly some added water), the smoothie emits roughly 0.84 lbs CO2e/lb which is pretty close to numbers for frozen fruit and fruit juice. Fresh fruit however emits roughly 0.3 lbs CO2e/lb. So the smoothie has almost three times the footprint of fresh fruit. Comparing Coke to its main ingredient tap water is pretty hard on Coke. 300 ml of U.K. tap water emits only 0.1 gram of CO2e.

In both cases you are putting roughly 1/3^rd lb of GHG into the atmosphere for convenience - the equivalent to what a car emits over 1/3^rd of a mile. Maybe this is the comparison that matters.

This is exactly what we need! With only two beverages footprints, people are talking about what it means and digging deeper into how products are really made and what the impacts are. With the footprints of tap water, juice, frozen and fresh fruit, we learn a great deal more about what our convenience lifestyle choices really cost.

Note that Coca-Cola subsequently bought an undisclosed minority stake in Innocent for £30 million. Maybe they felt bad about the whole thing.

Got Carbon?

I've been a fan of what Brian Keane and SmartPower have been doing. They are the "Got Milk? organization on clean energy". Their approach is to "market like its Coca-Cola". And that got me to thinking about a basic low-carbon lifestyle advertising issue.

It would be hard to live in this country and not be aware of the green-house-gas (GHG) and global warming issues. It would seem though that general awareness is not translating into personal interest and action on the scale we need when it well could.

A key issue in any advertising campaign is reach. Can you connect with your audience? In the case of GHG emissions however, the message is relevant to everyone, so you run the risk that the message gets lost. To be effective advertising a low-carbon lifestyle, I think you have to connect with people in the decision making process. Your have their attention. In this way, it's more like point-of-sale or impulse advertising. Sounds like a grocery store.

Did you know that Wal-Mart, Kroger, and Safeway sell 41% of all groceries in this country? In addition to food, the Big-3 are also the biggest distributors of food information in this country. While the specific "own operations" carbon footprint of the Big-3 is small in the context of the overall problem, the sphere of influence of the Big-3 is not. Just counting food purchases, shoppers of the Big-3 account for 6% of U.S. emissions. And when you consider all discretionary purchases made by consumers of the Big-3, you are talking about 33% of total U.S. emissions. The role of the Big-3 in our national fight to reduce GHG emissions is unique and should be leveraged.

Note – As specific Wal-Mart, Kroger or Safeway is not public, I've made estimates based on several related sources.

We Need a Good Food Fight

I guess the slow progress of food manufacturers is to be expected. It is well known in business that cost minimization is a long and slow process. Carbon is a new cost - a cost that isn't even imposed yet (at least in this country).

A much faster acting corporate motivator for innovation is growth. And in the food industry growth is market share. As I've written about, food can be a key front in the fight. Government regulation won't move the food industry fast enough. Market share will. We need to make this a fight about market share. We need a good food fight!

In the ongoing fight for market share, the food industry brings out their big guns. True, P&G for example spent $2.2 billion last year on R&D. But they spent $9.4 billion on advertising worldwide ($3.7 in the U.S.). In total, the top-5¹ spent a staggering $21.7 billion in advertising worldwide and $7.1 billion in the U.S. alone.

What if a key advertising message was about green-house-gases? What if a portion of the ad budget was re-directed to R&D to reduce product footprints? That would set up quite the food fight. Who doesn't like a good food fight? This fight needs to be started by consumers. And when it's over, we will all be smiling!

Notes: (1) P&G, Unilever, J&J, Nestle and Coca-Cola.

We Can’t Wait for Food Manufacturers

What is the food industry doing to reduce emissions? First, green-house-gas (GHG) reduction is clearly in the domain of food manufacturers. The food-miles study I referenced in an earlier post concluded that transportation generates only 11% of food system total emissions (less as a percentage if you add emissions from consumer grocery shopping, cooking, cleanup, waste and recycling). So government increasing the fuel efficiency standards for transportation will help, but is not the main battle.

The second thing I found is encouraging. I found that a number of food industry heavy weights are voluntarily and publically committing to green-house-gas reduction goals¹.

Consumer Products Company	Stated US GHG Reduction Goal Own Operations Only
Anheuser-Bush	5% from 2005 to 2010
Campbell Soup	12% from 2005 to 2010
Colgate-Palmolive	25% from 2002 to 2010
Frito-Lay	14% from 2002 to 2010
Johnson & Johnson	15% from 2001 to 2010
Molson Coors Brewing	12% by 2010
PepsiCo	25% from 2006 to 2015
SC Johnson	8% from 2005 to 2010
Unilever	25% from 2004 to 2012 (global)

These goals however become far less encouraging when you realize that they only relate to "own operations". The goals essentially relate to direct energy consumed by company owned manufacturing plants, office building, employee travel and transportation. It does not include emissions from the agricultural and packaging supply chains. Own operations is a very narrow slice of the complete footprint. For example, Unilever's own operations footprint is 3.0 million MT CO2e while they estimate their full life cycle footprint, from raw material sourcing to product use and disposal, in the region of 120-240 million MT CO2e.

Notes: (1) Two leading vehicles are the Carbon Disclosure Project and EPA's Climate Leaders project.

Coca-Cola Global Footprint

The Coca-Cola Company is the only major food company that I can find that publishes the carbon footprint of their main products. And it's not that Coke has an easy road ahead of them. Much of their revenues come from "sparkling" beverages (a.k.a. contain carbon dioxide). Sugar is sure to be a contentious issue going forward as food use competes with use as a transportation fuel. And of course, as a planet, we are quickly running short of fresh water. Not to mention manufacturing and recycling of aluminum cans, plastic bottles, plastic and wax paper cups.

To put things in perspective, "people enjoy" 1.6 billion servings of Coke's beverages every day. Using data from Coke's website, the average 8 oz. serving contributes 90 grams (or 0.2 lbs) of green-house-gases (GHG). Multiple these together and you have a rough estimate of the complete worldwide footprint of Coca-Cola products – 52 million metric tons CO2e annually. That is the equivalent of the GHG emissions from 14 million cars in the U.S. for a year.

The question is: what is Coke doing about it? That is where it becomes unclear from the outside and perhaps discouraging in the context of the enormity of the footprint. I can't find a public statement from Coke committing (or planning) to make a dent in their global footprint. Not that there isn't activity. It appears that Coke is working on reducing the amount of packaging material they use and making what they use more recyclable. They are also working to improve the fuel efficiency of their transportation fleet and owned refrigerated vending machines. Unfortunately what I read sounds like good public relations – lots of sound bites. When I read in the 2008 Annual Report, Letter to Shareholders from the CEO, that the company saved 31,177 lbs of GHG emissions by printing the annual report differently, I get concerned. That is not the leadership that is going to address the GHG problem.

Food is Vital in the Fight to Reduce GHGs

This is a historic week in the fight to reduce green-house-gases with President Obama's decision to significantly raise vehicle fuel efficiency standards. While I applaud this move and everything else the new administration is doing in this area, it will not be enough.

The President can only operate on the supply side of the economy. Government can effectively set a price on carbon and consumers will have to pay a higher price for products that emit too much. It's not that I believe this won't work; it's just that these types of market forces take time – time we don't have and can't afford to waste.

We need to open a second front in the war. We need to fight on the demand side as well – we need to engage consumers actively in the fight. Consumers have been sitting on the sidelines. Hundreds of millions of us in the U.S. and billions across the world. This is a waste and a huge mistake.

What if every time a consumer bought something, not only did they ask what it costs, but also, what impact the product has on the planet? As it turns out, food shopping and consumption is the perfect place to start for three reasons:

• Important. Food is a big deal all by itself. Based on pioneering work by Chris Weber and Scott Matthews at Carnegie Mellon University¹, food growing, processing, packaging, distribution and retail accounts for 12% of total U.S. GHG emissions.


• Broad. How we consume food, to a large extent, is a lifestyle choice. And how we consume food accounts for another 3.3% of total emissions². This includes trips to the grocery store (in a big vehicle that may have been chosen because it is easy to load and unload), cooking, cleanup, waste and recycling.


• Frequent. People buy groceries frequently. According to ACNeilsen's tracking survey, the average American family shopped for groceries 1.3 times per week in 2004. At least once each week, every household in this country is considering food choices. They are looking for new things and comparing ingredients and prices. They are in effect learning something new about food every week. What if GHG emissions were something they were learning about and considering every week?
  

This is the vital role food can play: Make a big dent in emissions … learn something about how our lifestyle emits GHGs … make an adjustment … repeat (again next week). And pretty soon, GHGs will be top-of-mind. GHGs will be a regular part of our decision making process for everything we consume.

Sources:
(1) Chris Weber and Scott Matthews: "Food-Miles and the relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States", April 2008 (unfortunately there is no free source for this important study). This research may still underestimate emissions from land use changes and emissions from imported food.
(2) Tara Garnett: "Cooking up a storm" Food Climate Research Network, The Center for Environmental Strategy, University of Surrey – Sept 2008. This study also shows that the overall food footprint (including the supply chain and consumer end-use) account for 19% of total U.K. emissions. It is likely that one of the reasons that the U.K. food footprint is proportionately larger than in the U.S. is because the U.K. imports significantly more of its food and transportation is much larger in the U.S.

My Not Insignificant Foot Footprint

Using the product footprint estimates I compiled, I was able to compute my overall food footprint. Over the last 12 months, I spend $5,880 for 1.2 tons of food and was responsible for 2.1 tons of green-house-gas emissions. That's two Olympic size swimming pools of pollution on my account. Not good. Billions of us on this planet can't continue to do that ... anything multipled by a billion suddenly becomes a very big deal.

What can I do about it? Lots! First, I can buy carbon offsets for under $30 (at the market rate of $14/ton) to deal with my historic emissions. Going forward, some simple food choices make a big difference. Though I guess I knew this, my analysis showed that consumption of meat, milk and vegetables make up the majority of my footprint. So I've decided to significantly reduce my red meat consumption (if not eliminate it all together) by eating chicken instead. This saves 394 lbs – 19% of my footprint. And instead of drinking so much milk, I am going to look into a protein powder mix. This saves 274 lbs – 13% of my footprint. Two simple adjustments to my diet and I've reduced my footprint by 1/3^rd.

Again, I am struck by what Mahatma Gandhi said: "Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it."

Note - Vegetables are a little trickier. My database doesn't do a good enough job yet of looking at in-season and local production. What I am learning is that "hot house" production is extremely energy intensive.

Footprint of Washing Clothes – Who Knew?

Washing clothes has a significant impact on your personal carbon emissions. As a good friend of mine would say "who knew?" Well the good folks at P&G know but for some reason aren't telling. So this post is everything you wanted to know about laundry but didn't know to ask (a theme I will pick up on later).

According to research in the U.K. the average wash generates 1.12 lbs of CO2e. Emissions are 34% more if you use hot water and 36% less if you use warm water. 70% of the energy involved runs the washing machine with 90% used to heat the water. Washing clothes accounts for 14% of total household electricity consumption (in the U.K.). This equates to over 300 lbs of CO2e per household annually which is roughly equivalent to driving a car 300 miles.

But wait. Laundry detergent, for reasons that become quite clear, is the leading reformulated product. Laundry detergent has been reformulated no less than 4 times since 2005!

1. Concentrated (2X). Wal-Mart, that sells 800 million units/year and accounts for 25% of laundry detergent sales in the U.S., is generally credited with ramping up the process when they decided to only sell concentrated detergent. Wal-Mart, always with the sharp pencil and calculator, figured out that they were shipping and stocking (with valuable shelf space) a significant amount of water, filler and other ingredients that didn't add real value to the product, but added considerable logistics costs. According to the company, the move to sell only concentrated liquid detergent will save more than 400 million gallons of water, 95 million pounds of plastic resin and 125 million pounds of cardboard.


2. Cold Water. Tide launched Tide Coldwater at the beginning of 2005 that was specifically formulated to do as a good a washing job in cold water.
   
3. 3X. Unilever's all Small & Mighty 3X brand is a further concentration launched in the fall of 2005.


4. Gel. P&G launched Ariel Excel Gel in the U.K. late last year. It is being currently test marketed in the U.S. This is a new formulation at two levels. First, it is a gel which means it requires less water and less ingredients overall like stabilizers, thickeners and solvents used in liquid detergents. Ariel Excel Gel was also designed to wash effectively in cold water (15° C or 50° F). According to P&G, the gel product uses 30% of the energy and 40% of the water in manufacturing and 14% less packaging in its super concentrated form.
   

This is a prime example of how consumer product companies can compete on real value add. Imagine if more of P&G's $2.2. billion in R&D was focused on reducing carbon emissions. Or for that matter, some of the $2.8 billion it spent last year on advertising (down from $4.6 billion in 2005) was channeled to find low-carbon breakthroughs. The consumer products industry is incredibly competitive. It is large and not fast growing. As consumers, let's give them something useful to focus on!

Carbon Footprint of Fresh Produce

Here is a table of footprints and costs to offset a range of fresh produce items found in a typical large grocery store. Again, with few exceptions (e.g. rice, cucumbers, tomatoes, cheese, margarine, cooking oils, sugar), the premium on the product price to offset carbon emissions is well less than 1%. Note that in this table, I've standardized the unit to one pound of produce.

Item	CO2e Footprint (lbs/lb)	Cost to Offset	Relative to Price
Potatoes (Russet – big bag)	0.17	0.12¢	0.30%
Mashed potato powder (box)	1.12	0.78¢	0.27%
Frozen french fries (bag)	0.57	0.40¢	0.27%
Rice (enriched, big bag)	1.68	1.18¢	1.75%
Flour (big bag)	0.99	0.69¢	1.14%
Oatmeal breakfast (big can)	1.00	0.70¢	0.46%
Cereal breakfast (box)	1.00	0.70¢	0.35%
Plain bread (large sliced loaf)	0.76	0.53%	0.63%
Wheat thins	2.64	1.85¢	0.55%
Buns and rolls (large bag)	0.91	0.64¢	0.30%
Pasta (dry, box)	0.81	0.57¢	0.45%
Onions (yellow, bulk)	0.50	0.35¢	0.35%
Cabbages (various, bulk)	0.50	0.35¢	0.35%
Tomatoes (various, bulk)	3.29	2.30¢	1.23%
Green salad (spring mix, bag)	3.30	2.31¢	0.42%
Cucumber (bulk)	3.30	2.31¢	3.05%
Canned vegetables (small can)	0.30	0.21¢	0.25%
Apples (various, bulk)	0.24	0.17¢	0.17%
Bananas (bulk)	0.45	0.32¢	0.40%
Oranges (bulk)	0.25	0.18¢	0.20%
Frozen blueberries (bag)	0.79	0.55¢	0.32%
Jelly (grape, bottle)	0.81	0.57¢	0.45%
Cheese (various, brick)	8.00	5.6¢	2.24%
Butter (various, sticks)	0.98	0.69¢	0.20%
Margarine (various, bucket)	2.12	1.48¢	1.17%
Cooking oils (vegetable, bottle)	3.53	2.47¢	1.54%
Sugar (fine granulated, box)	4.18	2.93¢	7.32%

Notes – GHG intensity is from a project in Sweden in 2004 (unfortunately it is not available for free on the web). It used secondary sources to compile a complete list of food items in the Swedish diet. The carbon footprints are the complete production and distribution life-cycle and don't include consumer trip to the store or meal preparation. I think Sweden is a good rough proxy for U.S. food emissions. Sweden has roughly the same overall per-capita food footprint as in the U.S. Sweden does though import more of its food. The extra emissions from importation may be somewhat balanced by the higher percentage of electricity that is generated from clean sources (nuclear and hydro). It is likely that food emissions are higher in Sweden and therefore this table is a conservation estimate for U.S. food items. As is the case with the table posted yesterday, the price used for comparison to the carbon offset cost is the lowest available price (again to ensure the results are conservative).

Value Proposition 2.0

It's time for an update to the concept of a value proposition. Over 25 years ago, Michael Lanning (while at McKinsey) defined a powerful business concept and coined wonderful phrase - the "value proposition". It said that a consumer of a product will associate a value to a product based on the delivery of a set of perceived benefits.

A new basis of competition is "impact on the planet". And the value proposition should reflect this. Impact forms a new powerful differentiating factor in the marketplace. A recent survey of U.K. consumers by Carbon Trust found that 67% of consumers are more likely to buy a product with a low-carbon footprint. People want zero!

Value proposition 2.0 (VP2.0) says that value now is benefits plus impact (of lack thereof). Impact itself is not a benefit because the consumer doesn't get the benefit of a zero-carbon product, we all do.

This is a huge business opportunity for the consumer packaged goods industry. I think the packaged goods industry is stagnate. Most of the cost has been rung out of the supply chain and the industry has been competing for market share based on packaging and flavor. The industry is at the part of the innovation S-curve where innovation is incremental at best. We need to jump to a new zero-carbon S-curve. (Note that packaging and flavor inherently add carbon to a base product.)

Carbon Footprint of Food Items

I've compiled a larger sample of the carbon footprints of typical grocery store items. On a macro basis, the average American family (of 2.5 people) spends $6,133 on in-home and out-of-home food. Chris Weber and Scott Matthews of Carnegie Mellon University calculate that the average U.S. household's carbon footprint from food consumption is 8.1 tons. It would cost $113 to buy carbon offsets for 8.1 tons (using $14/ton from Native Energy). That equates to an increase of 1.8% of the total average annual food budget. I can afford that!

A couple of things jump out from the list. First, CO2e emissions vary widely by product. I will write another post of what is behind the numbers. In many cases, what drives the carbon footprint is not what you expect. The second thing that jumps out is with the exception of beef, milk and imported bottled water, the cost to offset the carbon footprint is less than 1% of the price of the product.

Item	CO2e Footprint	Cost to Offset	Relative to Price
Orange juice	3.75 lbs/½ gallon jug	2.6¢	1.1%
Milk (organic)	14.4 lbs/gallon jug	10¢	2.0%
Beer (micro brew)	7 lbs/6-pack	5¢	0.6%
Bottled water (spring, imported)	1.3 lbs/1 liter bottle	0.9¢	0.6%
Bottled water (purified, local)	0.4 lbs/½ liter bottle	0.3¢	2.1%
Coffee (Arabica)	5.7 lbs/lb ground	4¢	0.5%
Eggs (organic, free-range)	5.2 lbs/dozen	3.6¢	0.9%
Chocolate bar (milk)	0.75 lbs/3.5 oz bar	0.5¢	0.4%
Soup (chicken noodle)	0.4 lbs/8 oz can	0.3¢	0.3%
Beef	14.8 lbs/lb	10.4¢	5.2%
Pork	3.8 lbs/lb	2.7¢	1.2%
Chicken	1.1 lbs/lb	0.8¢	0.8%
Wine (imported, France)	3 lbs/750 ml bottle	2.1¢	.07%
Wine (imported, Australia)	0.6 lbs/750 ml bottle	0.4¢	.02%
Wine (local, California)	0.6 lbs/750 ml bottle	0.4¢	.04%

Notes - The list came from sources in the U.S. and Europe. If it was an imported product then I made sure it was a U.S. product and calculation. With the exception of beef, pork and chicken, the carbon footprint is of the entire product lifecycle (not including consumer transportation and preparation). The base product price used to make the comparison with the carbon offset cost is the lowest price available for the product (in order to be conservative). So this would mean the deal price if the product is often sold on-deal or the price of the lowest type of the product (e.g. I used the cheapest cuts of meat, pork and poultry).

A Couple of Zero Food Products

Clif Bar’s Quench
Clif Bar just announced a new sports drink called Quench. Working with Native Energy, Clif offset all the CO2 emissions created in the manufacturing and supply chain for Quench. I think Quench hits the same price point as their carbon-rich competitors. Clif may have been able to make a serious of changes in the product that reduced its cost. They may have been able to do this (e.g. change the packaging) because Quench could be a little different than its competition, as one of their main points of differential is now zero-impact. I don’t think Clif published the carbon footprint for Quench.

Tropicana
PepsiCo working with Carbon Trust worked out that a ½ gallon of Tropicana orange juice emits 3.75 lbs of CO2 in its complete lifecycle (field to consumer use and disposal). Recently reported in the New York Times, PepsiCo was surprised to find that actually growing the oranges, not transportation is the largest contributor and that it is almost entirely due to the application of nitrogen fertilizer. Nitrogen fertilizer uses considerable natural gas in its manufacturing process and apparently turns into a potent greenhouse gas when spread on fields.

Based on the cost of carbon offsets from Native Energy (at $14/ton of 0.7 cents/lb), offsetting a ½ gallon of OJ would cost 2.6 cents. Compared to an on-deal price of $2.39 and a full price of $5.99, offsetting carbon emissions would mean a 0.44% and 1.1% increase in the ½ gallon of OJ. I can afford that!

A Great Idea for P&G

I read an Earth Day blog post on Grist by Procter & Gamble Sustainability VP Len Sauers in hopes of finding out what P&G is doing. Though Len had good things to say in general, I was disappointed by what he disclosed about P&G’s progress. He cited the standard laundry detergent example. While the P&G / Wal-Mart initiative was a good first move, it hasn’t been followed up with a string of carbon-free products by either market leader.

So I thought I’d send a shot across Len’s bow and suggest a practical way forward P&G could execute across the board and quickly:

Len –

But it hasn’t “evolved for all of us”. It’s part of your job – so you are way ahead of the curve.

By my math less well less than half a million Americans know their carbon footprint. To me, that is where you start. McKinsey has pointed out that getting below 500 ppmv isn’t really expensive (around 1% of GDP). I can afford 1%. So what gives? A recent global survey by Accenture found that 37% of companies have “no awareness of the level of supply chain emissions”. This is not the progress we need.

Here is the consumer problem as I see it. I’ve got 364 other things to worry about. Why do I buy organic milk (and pay more for it)? Because it’s in my face. I can’t avoid the comparison – drink hormones or not. Why did I buy ClimateSmart carbon offsets from PG&E? Because they put it right in my face (in the online bill pay setup). I was forced to think about what I was doing to the environment.

I understand that rebuilding P&G supply chains and manufacturing processes will take considerable time. We can’t wait for that however. Why doesn’t P&G put it right in my face? You can relatively easily figure out the footprint of each of your products. Work with Safeway and put that along the product price in the database. Give me the option right at checkout to offset that product. That way you have a cyber equivalent “zero” product. As I am sure you know Safeway is having success putting other good causes in the checkout process (e.g. donating to MS).

I think carbon awareness on consumer products is critical. Most people grocery shop at least once/week. With this type of a program, they would be potentially choosing a zero product every week (or at least be forced to consider it). This makes the carbon decision part of their regular thought process. Not only would the actual offsets help, but there would be tremendous spillover.

Maybe this is one good first step in the journey.
Greg

Few People Know Their Carbon Footprint

I am not the best researcher, but I can’t find anyone tracking how many people know their carbon footprint. That knowledge would seem to me to be elemental. I believe that the world has to work on this problem. Otherwise we won't get far enough or fast enough to a low carbon future. We can’t just leave it to “the experts” and the government. Maybe it’s because I am from Silicon Valley and believe in the power of the “long-tail”. I believe in what Mahatma Gandhi said: "Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it. "

I've used some figures in what appears to be the definitive report by Katherine Hamilton and team,"State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets 2008” to make an estimate. The number I come up with is shockingly low. Here is my calculation based on their findings:

• If you assume half the retail offset volume was corporate and half consumer that would imply 240,000 people in the U.S. offset an average footprint of 7.5 tons/year in 2007.


• Indications are that 2008 could have grown by as much as 240% over 2007 and so it could mean that half a million people offset their footprint last year.

We have a long way to go though before we are at a reasonable base “consumer engagement” case, say 1% of the population offsetting their vehicle emissions.

The New Carbon Calculator “You Should Kill Yourself” Button

The literal interpretation of my individual footprint is that the best way for me to help the planet is to ... remove myself from it (i.e. die)! While that would be effective, it’s not my preferred approach. I was shocked to find out that I put 20 tons of CO2 into the air every year – primarily because I drive a lot. But short of turning my life entirely upside down, there doesn’t seem like there is much I can do. Or is there?

I did of course buy carbon offsets. But I’d rather conserve. Of the long list of things I could do (everyone seems to have posted a top-10 list of how to be green), where is the leverage for me? Where do I get the biggest bang for my buck? And if I’m not that price sensitive, where can I really reduce emissions?

The Carbon Trust and some other folks in the U.K. did a brilliant analysis in 2006. They developed a country wide model called “The carbon emissions generated in all that we consume”, which reallocates U.K. industrial carbon accounts to consumer end uses.

I think there is a really important insight drawn from their findings that has been overlooked. The top three categories of high level consumer needs represent 44% of emissions (see chart). What is important to observe, is that these needs tend to be much more discretionary than other categories. That is good news – a big portion of my emissions is under my practical control. I can’t easily change how my housing has been build (accounted for in the “household” category). But I can take a vacation close to home instead of flying. I may not have a public transportation option for getting to work. But I could wash my clothes less often; always in cold water and air dry in the summer (in the “clothing and footwear” account).

I think in general, a model that breaks emissions into discretionary, non-discretionary and maybe categories would be helpful. Then I could make a plan to say reduce my discretionary emissions by 50% this year. And that is much closer to being actionable. I’d like to stay on the planet if at all possible. I like it here. Now all I need is the information to create that 50%-off plan.