There are lots of ways to whittle away at our carbon totals, it’s all achievable and doesn’t mean a life of sackcloth and ashes. Mike Berners-Lee’s carbon footprint listing throws up some surprising calculations, the increased carbon footprint of baby vegetables versus their more knobbly grown-up relations, the high totals for rice, the importance of eating in season and what staggered me is the huge carbon footprint of cut flowers and the accumulated totals for an average Christmas. And that’s not to forget our last act – dying and the carbon footprint we leave as a legacy. It’s serious stuff but the author’s enthusiasm for his subject is most infectious, there is pleasure to be had in cutting down and changing our way of life, a view he most successfully conveys.
How Bad are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything Synopsis
This is the first book to work out the carbon footprint of (nearly) everything, from a cup of tea and a bottle of wine through to skiing holidays and volcano eruptions. We always hear the same old green advice...fly less, turn the thermostat down, drive a hybrid car. But what about all the other things we buy and do? Part green-lifestyle guide, part popular science book, How Bad Are Bananas? is the first book to provide the facts we need to make carbon-savvy purchases and lifestyle decisions. It also helps put things into perspective with entries for the big things (bushfires, volcanic eruptions and the Iraq war) as well as the little things (newspapers, sending a letter, a pint of beer). This book is packed full of surprises - a plastic bag has the smallest footprint of any item listed, while a block of cheese is fairly bad news for the climate - and continuously informs, delights and engages the reader.
Mike Berners-Lee is the founding director of an associate company of Lancaster University which specialises in organisational responses to climate change.
