Be a one tonner: tackling your carbon footprint

Over in Cheltenham an indefatigable campaigner, Cathy Green has a new project - it is all about taking responsibility for our personal CO2 emissions and cutting them by 80% - ie going from using 5 tonnes per year to one tonne - but doing it together in a group with others - she is launching the project in February and everyone is invited to go along to find out more.

So how to do it? How can we cut those emissions? Cathy writes:

"The process is very simple and easy to do - all you really need to do is switch to a Green Electricity supplier, insulate your house, cut down the driving and STOP FLYING! Once you have done these actions you will be well on your way to becoming a One Tonner."

You can read more about her project on her Blog.

This local project is a very useful and necessary development - we need to be showing ourselves and others how it can be done - and there is lots of good info out there - there are now loads of websites to help calculate 'carbon footprints'and CO2 emissions - and of course also give advice on how to tackle them.

There is also often conflicting information about how much we actually produce - one of the most recent pieces, a study by the government-funded Carbon Trustputs the annual carbon footprint of the average Briton at 10.92 tons of CO2 - a huge amount but US citizens average 19 tons of CO2 each year (see their great picture left dividing up the proportions of carbon). And as the Carbon Trust say the first step to reducing our emissions is to understand where they come from...

Interestingly the research demonstrates that our leisure and recreation pursuits - activities as diverse as watching a football match or taking a trip to the seaside - account for most of our emissions. Nearly a fifth of the average British citizen's 10.92 tons of CO2 - 1.95 tons - is emitted through recreation and leisure: everything from holiday trips by car and visiting a gym, which has substantial emissions, a trip to a leisure centre where the swimming pool is heated, watching television and enjoying live evening sport under floodlights.

However the importance of minimising carbon emissions from our homes is also reinforced by the figures, which show the average British citizen contributes 1.49 tons of CO2 a year through the heating of his or her home.

In the third category, 1.39 tons of CO2 are generated by food and catering. That includes everything from emissions generated directly by cooking and food use - refrigerating, freezing and cooking - plus the indirect emissions from the production of food and drink products and services. Production includes raw material cultivation, packaging production, manufacturing, distribution, disposal and recycling. Together, the top three categories account for a half of our individual carbon emissions.

An amazing 2kg of carbon can be saved for every journey under three miles for which we walk and don't use the car. Clearly taking public transport is also apart of the answer - sadly it is often poor quality, too infrequent and too expensive - infact I've just written today to Network Rail re the Kemble to Swindon line which urgently needs the single track converted to a double - at last it is on the list of proposals for Network Rail to consider. I'm not yet sure how the consultation works (or doesn't) but I've written to get clarification and lend support to the doubling of the tracks.

Anyhow closer to Stroud than the One Tonner project is the Transition Towns project - see my Blog entry for Wednesday last week. Their website is also growing all the time - and talking of website's we've had a little change around of the Glos Green party's home page - hopefully makes it easier to find what you are looking for - there is also always the search engine.