The average UK citizen creates 11 tonnes of Carbon Dioxide a year.
New UK targets aim to cut this by 80%.
Dividing the ration equally between categories “consumables”, “building”, “transport” and “government”, allows 1.5kg per day.
The estimates below are for CO2e and amount of a 1.5kg daily ration. Click images for more infomation.
CO2e: 642.0 kg (428 days)
Return distance 2,400 km at 260 gm CO2 per km
(Leeds/Bradford to Prague and back)
CO2e: 0.33 kg (5 hours)
Lime Concentrate …
Sea Freight …
Plastic Bottle 300 gm CO2 (43 gm plastic film at 6.96 tonnes CO2e per tonne)
Road Freight 30 gm CO2 (147 gm per tonne km * 200 km /1000 = 29.4 gm Co2e)
Sugar …
CO2e: 0.4kg (7 hours)
I have been in touch with Jamais Cascio <cascio@openthefuture.com> in America.
I read his article The Cheeseburger Footprint (http://www.openfuture.com) and it was so good
I asked him if he could calculate the footprint of a litre of milk.
Here is his very thorough answer. Check it out!
In order to fully calculate the carbon footprint of milk,
I’d need to have numbers on energy consumed in processing the milk
(pasteurization, bottling, etc.) and transportation;
beyond that, the main carbon impact will be from the methane produced by the cattle.
This calculation would be reasonably straightforward — a first pass estimate would be
(Amount of methane produced by a milk cow in a year) / (Amount of milk produced by a milk cow in a year)
…or…
(242 lbs of methane)* / (19,951 lbs of milk)** = 0.012 lbs of methane per lb of milk
1 gallon of milk = ~8.5 lbs, so
1 gallon of milk = 0.102 lbs of methane
but!
1 unit methane = 23 units of CO2 in terms of greenhouse impact, so
1 gallon of milk = 2.35 lbs of CO2 equivalent
Add in a pound of CO2 equivalent for processing and transportation (as a very crude figure),
and that ends up to be about 3.35 pounds of CO2 equivalent per gallon of milk.
Call it three-and-a-half pounds of CO2 equivalent per gallon of milk.
Or, in metric:
1 litre of milk = 282 grams of CO2 equivalent in methane.
With transport & processing, call it about 400 grams of CO2 equivalent per litre of milk.
Sources:
* Methane amount: http://www.epa.gov/rlep/faq.html (in kilos, 1 kilo = 2.2 lbs)
** Milk per cow: http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/
MilkProdDi/MilkProdDi-04-27-2007.txt
CO2e: 1.3kg (20 hours)
106 gm Cardboard (*3.3) = 350 g
44 gm PlasticPackaging (* 7) = 308 g
RoadFreight 3.15 Kg 1000 km/6800 km= 440 g
Agriculture 200g
CO2e: 8.4kg (5 days, 15 hours)
CO2e: 4.4kg (3 days)
CO2e: 0.39kg (6.5 hours)
AgriculturalImpact 100g
FoodRefridgeration 100g
220g RoadFreightCarbonDioxide to London (*0.21) 48g
20 gm CarbonDioxideFromPlastic (* 7) 140g CO2e
220g RoadFreightCarbonDioxide fromLondon (*0.03) 6g
CO2e: 1.5kg (1 day)
200 gms Beans + 20 gm packaging
220 gms * AirFreightCarbonDioxide from Niarobi (*6.14) = 1350 gm Co2e
20 gms * PlasticPackaging (*7) = 140 gm Co2e
220 gms * RoadFreight 200 kms (/6800) = 6 gm Co2e
CO2e: 0.5kg (8 hours)
