Help me make the right choice
There was a great Article in the FT today…
This is something I have been discussing for a long time. We have guidance metrics that steer us in the right direction in many spheres e.g., how many units of alcohol per week we should consume, how many steps a day we need to do, the number of calories we should consume, the amount of hours we should sleep etc…. but we have zero idea on specific numbers for environmentally friendliness? Fundamentally what are the CO2 or KW numbers for the products we buy, and the appropriate target amount we should consume each day?
I have long had an interest in environmental change that was sparked by my studies into fuel cells during my Chemistry degree in the mid 90’s. When I took a sabbatical from the city in 2017, I set up a ‘Green’ business as a side project. I wanted to source and supply household products that were environmentally friendly alternatives to what we traditionally used. These included metal water bottles, bamboo toothbrushes and reusable bamboo coffee mugs. My thought process was it was ‘better’ to reuse rather than dispose of and if it had to be disposable then make from ‘greener’ materials.
Initially I was very enthused about this project and had much fun setting up the business, creating a website, learning SEO, researching products and markets, speaking with manufacturers in China, arranging logistics and building out social media presence and marketing.
Once the business was ticking along and I was researching further product lines, I had a nagging thought. Is the metal water bottle I’m selling actually ‘better’ than the plastic disposable bottle from the supermarket? I knew that single use plastics are very environmentally unfriendly and needed to be reduced but making a metal bottle and its packaging and shipping it from China to the UK is going to take way more CO2 and energy. But how much? How many times does a customer need to use the metal bottle for it to be a cleaner choice? 2 times? 200 times? 2000 times? Will the products life end before it becomes the better choice? Once it breaks how easy is it to recycle?
I spent a lot of time researching these questions, but I struggled to find specific information from manufacturers and logistics companies about the carbon footprints my products would leave. This encouraged me to think more deeply about my own consumption patterns. How can I make a judgement that product A is better than B? Is it greener to have amazon deliver me a product than for me to go to the shop to buy it? Is it greener to buy a product made in the EU rather than China? What are the specific CO2 costs of both those journeys?
I believe that we want to spend our money wisely, but we have no data to make an informed choice. As consumers we have some information and a gut feel about how we should behave but without specific measurable data we are susceptible to making terrible choices.
Consider disposable plastic shopping bags. A well-intentioned government initiative to reduce their numbers ended up creating a larger headache. Consumers ended up switching to using more ‘bags for life’ which are far more polluting than the original problem. {https://www.discoverwildlife.com/news/bags-for-life-exacerbating-the-plastic-problem/}
We are now seeing supermarkets move to paper bags instead. Optically this seems a better solution, but what about the environmental impact of these, the paper used, the wood, the glue?
What is greener, product A v B? Reading a paper book v using a kindle? Driving to France or Flying and a hiring a car? Refurbishing a building v demolition and rebuilding. Buying a new car with older tech v a new one with newer tech. Buying from China v Buying locally.
What we need is a standardised number on EVERYTHING we buy and consume so that we can make a relative value judgment and vote with our money. Once this happens, we can then make better choices rather than guess. The market will drive out poorer polluting products and will seek the Eco-friendly options instead.
