[Closed] How environmentally friendly are you?

I've recently stopped slashing and burning rain forest in order to breed beef cows for Macdonalds

You can * right off if you expect me to close down my leaky nuclear reactor too. I've done my *ing bit, George ****ing Monbiot!

I'm "Green Champion" at our office at work.

For what difference that makes.

I dont have a car, so i've done my bit.

Oooops, better go switch the lights off in the hallway. Shall i stop farting too?

I haven't taken a plane flight (other than two unavoidable work trips) since 2006.

<shameless plug>We made this [url= http://footprint.wwf.org.uk ]ecological footprint calculator[/url] that gives you a bit of a simplified rating of your green-ness</shameless plug>. I scored about 1.6.

No car, don't buy new consumer products often, don#t buy food that has been flown, cycle / walk most places.

fly short haul every couple of years, live in a hard to heat house.

Usual mixed bag. Better than the average in the UK by a long way, still not sustainable probably

I do everything I can regarding eco friendly cleaning products, recycling, walk and cycle whereever I can, super insulated house, solar panels on roof and much more.

The problem is though that I average 4 transatlantic flights a month which pretty much nulls and voids everything else I do. 😕

Work from home.
Use the car once a month at most (wife once a week).
Use the train on the odd occasion I have to travel long distance.
Rarely fly.
Log burner for bulk of heating (local wood).
All LED/low energy lighting.
Massively insulated house.
I prefer to salvage/restore than buy new.

I am an utter hypocrite though. Despite all my hippy credentials I couldn't care less about the environment.

I average 4 transatlantic flights a month which pretty much nulls and voids everything else I do

I endeavour to keep a massive pile of old car tyres burning furiously

Only use the air conditioning when it gets really hot, like 25ºC+.
Make sure I'm getting the best triple glazing available by visiting as many showrooms as possible, too many cowboys on the internet.
Insulating the house properly, the cost of running all this technology is getting ridiculous and one has to make savings where one can.
Every little helps

I knit my own yoghurt

I'm Trudy Styler

[url= http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2009/may/15/lost-in-showbiz-trudie-styler ]Eco Warri... errr?[/url]

I hold my breath every so often

+ Got rid of my car and motorbike.
+ Make all my personal journey by train or cycle.
+ The majority of my work is in an environmental monitoring capacity.

- I'm racking up about 90,000 airmiles in the next 4 months, very possibly more.

I think my carbon footprint is visible from space.

We made this ecological footprint calculator that gives you a bit of a simplified rating of your green-ness

Then again, it didn't ask about expenditure on sports kit 😉

I scored 1.87 onthat calculator and high on stuff even tho like aracer it was only diy tools

I've never punched an endangered species....

I average 4 transatlantic flights a month which pretty much nulls and voids everything else I do

If they're for work, they're your employer's problem not yours. (Though, you might be able to suggest ways of avoiding them?)

Very

I will decompose just like the rest of you.

1.77

And we actually try quite hard to make the right environmental choices.

I suspect that this calculator won't produce a figure lower than 1 (less than one earth required to support everyone at this level of consumption) unless you are vegetarian and probably have no car.

I am hardly reassured by the knowledge that there are a lot of people in India and Africa who fall into that category.

All of our rubbish is recycled or composted apart from plastic films.
Grow my own veg in summer
I try to avoid food that is flown
I often work from home

Unfortunately I do an average of 3 flights a month with work which destroys all that.

I'm trying to reduce the amount of methane I produce but I'm feeling a bit bloated as a result 😳

I am only mildly reassured by the knowledge that there are a lot of people in India and Africa who fall into that category.

Ahhh... hang on... that won't work.

2.58 on the calc here - much more work required. Some good ideas at reducing the impact on this thread

1.85 on the WWF calculator. (including Madame and a son who travels more than us)

The calculator doesn't take into account producing 60% more electricity than we use, doesn't allow me to include a 13-year-old in the household, doesn't include portion size in the meat/fish thing (we eat meat or fish everyday in moderation). Makes me count 2h of car use a week which is over double what we use (5000km/year). Doesn't allow you to state that you live in house that is down to "passive house" energy consumption.

In short, it assumes you are standard and to really make a difference you have to be non-standard. I played with the thing before they blocked a second attempt and it's impossible to get to 1 unless you're a homeless vegan. In reality a much higher level of economic activity is sustainable if we adopt a new lifestyle and technologies.

+ I don't have a car (although my wife does, and uses it pretty much every day) and will take the train whenever possible
+ Not much of a consumer of products/gizmos
+ Aiming to do most trips abroad by boat/train in future where possible

- I think my (rented) house is probably quite bad (all lights are clusters of halogens I think)
- I have to fly for work sometimes

So maybe a bit better than average but mixed bag like most others it seems.

Your footprint is
2.51 planets

I is massive 😆

3.81 for me but heavily influenced by air travel for work (once a month in europe on average) and a lot of driving (mostly commuting). Not ideal by any means but I do what I can at home.

2.91 oops

1.69

Is that bad, I have no idea what 1.69 means?

😯

[edit]There was no option for growing your own veg either?

4.94 😳

i'm cleaning a large engine casing by hand, and disposing of the cleaning rags, to avoid 2cubic centimeters of non-toxic silt being washed into the drain.

i'm a f***ing eco-warrior!

Best thing you can do is not have kids.
or if you have some, kill them.

All the rest of the stuff is bobbins.

I'm not having kids - so I'm a load more environmental than most of the breeders round here!

A couple of footprint calculator answers:

I suspect that this calculator won't produce a figure lower than 1 (less than one earth required to support everyone at this level of consumption) unless you are vegetarian and probably have no car.

It takes a lot of working through the tips at the end to get below 1, but that's kind of the point - so much of our impact is based on the big infrastructure-level stuff that we can't affect with our daily choices. It comes down to needing business and govt to see a public pressure to change. Sadly, in the current climate (no pun intended) that's getting harder and harder.

3.81 for me but heavily influenced by air travel for work (once a month in europe on average) and a lot of driving (mostly commuting). Not ideal by any means but I do what I can at home.

Technically, work flights shouldn't be included as they're bound up in your employer's footprint - they'd be passed on to the end consumer. Commuting journeys are as they're down to how far you decide to live from work. That said, if you can influence your employer to reduce the amount of flying you have to do (video conferencing etc), then do it.

Is that bad, I have no idea what 1.69 means?

On Edukator's comment, it's designed to be fairly accurate for the middle of the population bell-curve - it's about giving people an indication of their impact. Its accuracy definitely drops rapidly if you've got a relatively low (e.g. you, by the sounds of it) or high (e.g. celebs/billionaires) footprint. There are calculators out there that give a much more consistently accurate answer, but they take ages to fill in and need you to start entering figures from bills and petrol receipts.

So the WWF calculator should include how many children you have or intend to have right? More than two and you add a few planets, less than two you get a bonus.

There are calculators that are more quantative, heating with wood isn't ecological if you get through 12m3 that has travelled 100km.

A crossed post but unless you do enter numbers for gas, electricity, petrol, wood, red meat, how often you change your car etc. the result is going to be misleading.

While the world population is increasing by more than the poplulation of the town I live in every week our efforts are all pretty futile anyhow. The good news is that makign an effort saves a lot of money so that's more to spend on carbon made in Taiwan.

There are calculators that are more quantative, heating with wood isn't ecological if you get through 12m3 that has travelled 100km.

5.18 on the calculator 😥

To be fair I don't commute often or drive a huge amount, I have a relatively low impact lifestyle but +100000 miles of air travel in the last 7months (on my BA airmiles card). My UK carbon footprint is meaningless when compared to my airtravel. However business is business.

Ooh I did one of those online 'how green are you' things a while ago, and apparently I iz well green.

An ting.

Don't drive/own a car
Cycle everywhere possible
Don't eat crap pre-processed food much
Recycle paper, glass and metal, will now be recycling raw food waste
Buy s/h bike stuff rather than new
Don't buy much at all in the way of new stuffs, consumer goods etc
Grow some of me own fruit and veg well a few tomatoes!
Use energy saving bulbs wherever possible
Turn lights off, only boil enough water to make a cup of tea etc

Small, so my clothing uses less material, and so do my bikes.

Don't have kids so not produced any more planet-rapers (yet).

Yadda yadda yadda. Prolly one of the most environmentally friendly people on here.

Most of this friendliness is as a result of being skint though. 😆

If I was rich I'd be proper environmentally unfriendly. I'd make Clarkson look like a tree-hugger...

I only eat free range swan now. That farmed stuff was a bit chewy.

I found that I was throwing out a huge amount of children's clothing that hadn't worn out, I find it much cheaper and easier to exchange the children for others of a similar size.

Pretty bad.

I'm taking mass transit rather than the car next week for my holliday.

It was going to be Wales, but now it's a flight to Malaga 🙂

That calculator's bollocks. 1.99? does not in any way take into account I use those DIY tools (why is that even relevant? Do they mean power tools? A saw? A paintbrush?) to make stuffs from recycled wood and that. And loads of other things, like I don't have to have my heater on full blast cos the building is warmed by everyone in it, so we share heat. Heater does not in any way need to be on in the evening at all, hardly. And 14-17 is 'comfortable'? For who, a penguin? Ok if you're moving about a lot, but if you're sitting reading or something, you'd need loads of extra layers which equals more materials used for clothing. I'm fit and healthy and have low blood pressure. If I set my thermostat below 18, I'd become ill. I'd certainly need a lot more food to provide energy to keep me warm. They jolly well have not thought of that, have they?

As much as I agree with the need to recycle, re-use, reduce etc, that 'calculator' is not anywhere near an accurate means of testing how environmentally friendly someone actually is. It's just sensationalising the issues, without really offering practical real world solutions.

And what about the leccy used to power the servers it's run from, eh? EH?

WWF= hypocrites.

1.96 - i think the DIY tools shafted my score 🙁

2.27 on the calculator , to be fair though that new planet Kepler 22b has been discovered in the Goldilocks zone and it's bigger than earth so everything should be OK.

We Don't eat meat, do recycle, minimise car use , ration ourselves to one international air flight(return) per two years, shop local and organic use the car a couple of times a week.

Boycott every company i can think of a reason to boycott.

Blown i thing by getting a dryer this year to deal with crankbrats laundry which includes reusable nappies.

shop local and organic use the car a couple of times a week.

Still a bit confused as what the numbers tell us, can someone explain what it means to a numpty like me please.

& I dont consider myself to be that green tbh, but I do come from a farming backgroung, where 'To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves' was ingrained into me from an early age 😉

😆 at all of us being shafted by DIY tools! Is there some levaraging there that we're missing - an assumption that if you spend money on DIY tools you're doing lots of home improvement?

I'm not sure I'd like to claim to be lots better than my figure, but some of the things mentioned by edu/elf do apply - eg I do far less than 2 hours a week in a car, have a very old car etc.

Still a bit confused as what the numbers tell us, can someone explain what it means to a numpty like me please.

It means that in order to sustain your current lifestyle and consumption, you'd need 1.99 Planet Earths (or whatever your score was).

As I said, it's bollocks anyway. Cos if everyone else reduced their consumption to my level, then there'd be more to go around so I'd in fact need less planets.

Thanks Elf, the penny has dropped now, ta.

Drill, sander, jig saw, angle grinder, oxy-acetylene... . Try making a solar water heater without.

"Presumably organic is whole lot worse on a "number of planets needed" scale?"
I once ruined Xmas dinner with this as a topic with my brother .
Probably not, would be my answer yes pesticides and fertilizers may increase yield but they need chemical factories to manufacture and mines to extract the ingredients plus a distribution chain to supply them.
The difference in yield ain't that great and the earth produces enough to feed the current population.
we just have a really unbalanced distribution system that means fat westerners have too much to eat and waste as much as they consume and those in the third world don't have enough, even though they could live well of the western worlds waste.

All facts and implied figures above are made up.

my carbon footprint is very small but quite intense

After walking walking down my local high street just, it did make me wonder what environmental impact Christmas has?

1.67 = smug, no?

I don't know much about the organic/non-organic debate as such, but I do know that in the West, almost all food waste comes after consumption (there is very little waste in the production cycle itself), but in developing countries the waste is almost all in the production cycle, with almost no waste after consumption.

From that I deduce that organic is bad, and non-organic is good. M'kay?

Drill, sander, jig saw, angle grinder, oxy-acetylene... . Try making a solar water heater without.

Once I can get a couple of days in my man cave I'll be trying to do just that. I might need a drill but I plan on not using all that other stuff!

...that 'calculator' is not anywhere near an accurate means of testing how environmentally friendly someone actually is. It's just sensationalising the issues, without really offering practical real world solutions.

As I said, it's indicative, rather than comprehensive. If you want comprehensive you're going to be spending a lot longer filling in far more detailed questionnaires. This one's pretty good: http://www.reap-petite.com/

As far as real world solutions go, I'd say the tips at the end are pretty good suggestions of how to reduce your impact (but then, I would, wouldn't I?)

And what about the leccy used to power the servers it's run from, eh? EH?

We did a huge job of looking around the web hosting market and found a company that offers the lowest energy per server in the UK. It's all virtualised too, so don't have a dedicated machine spending its life averaging 2% utilisation. Nice try though.

WWF= hypocrites.

I realise I'm getting dangerously close to feeding a troll but how, exactly?

5.4 on the calculator. I go on holidays to nice places far away which is by far the worst thing I do - 20+ flights a year, most of which are 5+ hours

WWF= hypocrites

I realise I'm getting dangerously close to feeding a troll but how, exactly?

Cos you say it's a sport, but we all know it's just staged theatrics.

1.67, Green as.....

It all sort of ignores the fact we're all on the internet using vast amounts of electricity to power and cool data centres for no other reason than to post on an internet forum.

In our last house I planted 2 trees.
I'm only small so don't eat much.

It all sort of ignores the fact we're all on the internet using vast amounts of electricity to power and cool data centres for no other reason than to post on an internet forum.

Ahh... but those data centres would be running and the internet would still be here even if I logged out.

So by being here I've actually lowered the per-user carbon footprint. 😆

Ahh... but those data centres would be running and the internet would still be here even if I logged out.

why can't we just move to a bigger planet then?

Or kill half of the people that live on this one?

Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best you know

I recycle, use the bike for short journeys, have LED light bulbs and don't use a tumble-drier. Having said that, today I flew an empty Airbus from Belfast to Liverpool, taking 20 minutes and burning two tonnes of fuel in the process.

Not sure where in the pool of fire and brimstone that puts me, but I'm guessing pretty deep.

It all sort of ignores the fact we're all on the internet using vast amounts of electricity to power and cool data centres for no other reason than to post on an internet forum.

We could build the data centres in the far North (where it is always cold) next to a hydro electric scheme that is currently exporting loads of excess power. Like what Google are doing.

How could I harness the heat from our compost heaps?

Use it to keep hedgehogs warm?

Then eat the hedgehogs.

10.17 tons of carbon dioxide each on that site Ade.

2.1 on that calculator thing, and that's without even trying. The whole global warming thing isn't really an issue i'm concerned about. If I cared I'd probably half that quite easily.

Or kill half of the people that live on this one?

I believe that is the current de facto trajectory.

I plant a few thousand trees each year and 'sequester' carbon into building products and renewable fuels.

best not talk about my fires

I spend most days crying in a darkened room whilst I **** into a sock, so yeah pretty green I think.