How to be more sustainable- evaluating eco friendly tips (part 2)
Oriana in Year 8 is back at it again with everyday eco friendly tips that you can implement to reduce your CO2 emissions.
Around one third of global greenhouse gas emissions come from our food.
Just check out this table to see how:
| FOOD | AMOUNT OF FOOD | CO2 EMISSION PER YEAR. |
| Tomato. | One tomato once or twice a week. | 13kg. |
| Cheese. | 30g piece of cheese once a week or less. | 73kg (same as heating average UK house for 11 days). |
| Beef. | One portion once or twice a week. | 604kg (same as driving a petrol car 1542 miles). |
| Dairy milk. | Once a day. | 229kg. |
Rice, avocados, beef, and dairy milk are all serious contributors to carbon dioxide emissions.
We can avoid these foods, by having potatoes instead of rice. Did you know potatoes are the lowest contributors to CO2 emissions in its food group?
Most of us will not eat avocadoes more than three times a week so they do not form a staple part of our diet. How about substituting it with a citrus fruit to get in your 5 day? It is the lowest emitter of CO2 among all fruits and vegetables, after all.
Beef is the highest contributor out of all food groups and can be easily substituted with other sources of protein such as beans, tofu, peas, and eggs.
Dairy milk is probably the simplest to substitute with other plant-based milks such as almond milk or oat milk.
If one person substituted the foods I have just spoken about with the same portion of servings that are commonly eaten, that person would save 1716.7kg of CO2 emissions being released each year.
If you had a meal with dairy milk, beef, avocadoes, and tomatoes it would total to about 15kg of greenhouse gasses, per serving. Whereas if you substituted that meal with more sustainable items such as potatoes, citrus fruit, almond milk, and peas, you would have a meal that would cost the planet 0.23kg! It is things like this that make such a difference.
Appliances around the house also contribute to carbon dioxide emissions without even realising it.
Take hairdryers for example! National Geographic says that about 26kg of CO2 emissions are released into our atmosphere purely because of hairdryers.
Washing machines and tumble-drying costs our earth 440kg of CO2 emissions each year when you do a wash and dry twice a week, although I wanted to tell you about dish washers.
If you use a dish washer, then it releases between 770-990g of CO2 emissions each time you use it. This totals to about 328 thousand 500g of CO2 emissions each year if you use your dishwasher once a day. But this is disregarding temperatures.
Those of you who use dishwashers at 55 degrees centigrade are releasing 770g of CO2 emissions each time they turn their dishwasher on. Those of you who prefer a higher temperature to wash at, such as 65°C, release 990g of CO2 emissions each time they wash something. So, you can stop 220g of CO2 emissions going into the atmosphere and ruining our planet just by reducing the temperature of your washes.
If you do want to take it further (please do), you can wash up in the sink by hand with cold water, which releases almost no carbon dioxide. I have been doing this my entire life with my family so, as I am twelve years old, we can calculate how much CO2 emissions have been saved by washing by hand in cold water during my lifetime, which is 1,438,830kg in CO2 emissions saved. Think what a change you could make if you start doing this now.
16.2% of all global CO2 emissions come from travelling. Of which, 11.9% is road transport.
When you look at a car and see the exhaust, you are only seeing 50% of the CO2 emissions coming from the fuel in that car.
The other 50% comes from taking that petrol to the stations and manufacturing the vehicle. It’s from having the air conditioning on and using the accelerator too much. These factor in more than you think.
If you drive at 60mph instead of 70mph, don’t use the air con or put the windows down and not brake and accelerate too much, you save 42% of CO2 emissions from using the average car already. This decreases the average British car traveling at the average miles per gallon, from 710kg of CO2 to 298kg of CO2 each mile you do.
Also, it helps if you use an electric car. A 2018 study showed that a UK electric car releases about 66% less greenhouse gasses than a regular petrol car. But, both the price tag and the batteries prevent this solution from being viable for all.
However, whichever way you choose to make your day to day life more sustainable, it truly is a worthy cause.