There is too much carbon in our atmosphere. We hear it said all the time

Published: 11 June 2020

In his regular feature, Denis the Dustcart talks about how there is too much carbon in our atmosphere and what we can do about it.

You can follow Denis on his Facebook page to keep up with information about Recycling issues.

There is too much carbon in our atmosphere. We hear it said all the time.

Without the context of how it affects us and our community, however, the problem can be a somewhat hazy concept to grasp.

Carbon figures are too easily seen as just more massive numbers among many other ‘significant’ yet incomprehensible climate-related statistics – something unrateable to a person’s personal experience of the world.

How can what we do in Exeter possibly make a difference, when there are forests burning on the other side of the world?

The fact is: all human activity, wherever it occurs, is linked directly to the global climate and environmental emergency. Whether it’s in buying a shirt made with cotton from non-ethical plantations that have contributed to soil degradation and the devastating loss of inland water bodies in the Middle East through watercourse diversion, or in our dietary choices, or in our daily local commute by car, or in our travel from one country to another.

Everyone on earth is responsible for the earth. We can all make choices about what we buy and what activities we do; just as important, however, is the need to look after the small corner of the planet that we actually occupy – but we need leaders to show us what can be done.

And that is what Exeter is committed to being – a leader.

But what does ‘global heating’ actually mean? What does carbon have to do with it?

Put simply, carbon emissions trap solar energy in our atmosphere, heating up the planet, melting the ice caps, raising sea-levels. Every tonne of CO2 emitted around the world causes 3 square metres of Arctic sea ice to melt, according to a report in Science.

We in the UK are among the most significant contributors to global heating, therefore it’s only right that we should act to protect those in the immediate firing line of climate breakdown.

In 2014, the UK’s CO2 emissions were an average of 6.5 tonnes per person for the year. That’s 19.5 square meters of Arctic ice gone for each of us.

Bangladesh had a CO2 output of just 0.42 tonnes per person in that time, yet they are pretty much ground zero for climate breakdown. A 50cm rise in sea-levels would put more than 10% of the country underwater.

Depending on where shop, you may well be wearing clothes made in Bangladesh. The country’s economy relies to a large extent on the export of western fast-fashion brand textiles and garments. The cotton used in the production of such items comes from non-sustainable plantations, where watercourse diversion is causing water poverty, biodiversity loss and soil degradation. This soil cannot store carbon, so it releases it in massive quantities into the atmosphere. Crops won’t grow in it. Our consumption of fast-fashion is driving climate breakdown, and the horrible irony is that the first to suffer will be those who live where our fast-fashion is made – those who rely on our harmful habits.

‘Injustice’ doesn’t go far enough.

But many people’s first thought when ‘emissions’ are mentioned isn’t their clothes – it’s the car they drive. We all know that driving a petrol- or diesel-powered car produces greenhouse gasses.

Driving an average car for 1 year non-stop equates to about 225.5 tonnes of CO2.

365 days is a lot of driving – 8,760 hours in fact. What’s truly alarming is that driving an average car for 8,760 hours produces as much CO2 as a jumbo jet flying for just 7.12 hours – shorter than one working day.

Massive deforestation and the destruction of wild areas, the aforementioned mass-irrigation and soil-degradation through the emptying of inland water habitats – all to feed human consumer demands – mean the earth isn’t able to store carbon like it should. Combine this lack of storage space with increased emissions? The earth is shutting down – choking on the huge amounts of greenhouse gasses it can’t swallow.

And the blows of climate breakdown aren’t only landing in far-off places.

Severe storms, which used to be ‘once every hundred years’ events in the UK, are now happening twice in every five years, flooding towns and homes built on natural flood plains and where natural irrigation has been compromised by human activity, making whole communities homeless. The British have always been preoccupied with the weather, but this is genuine cause to be concerned.

For those unaffected directly by such catastrophes – i.e. those who live on a hill – the challenges of climate breakdown will manifest in an impact on the economy and our ability to consume things. Crops failing due to the soil’s nutrients being washed away by floodwater, or soil-degradation through over-irrigation or a lack of rainfall in other places of the world – crops that we rely on for our goods and food – will inevitably have a deep impact upon how live.

So, changing our consumer and lifestyle habits can make a change. But how can what we do in Exeter as a place actually make a difference?

If we were alone in making the effort to change, nothing would change. But we’re not alone – we can’t be alone – and the more places that work for change, the more joined-up the world becomes in that work.

Let’s look at some figures and, hopefully, provide some context for our efforts.

There were 124,300 people living in Exeter in 2014, which equates to 807,950 tonnes of carbon for the year based on that UK average of 6.5 tonnes per person (which doesn’t allow for regional variation).

The yearly carbon output of Exeter’s residents together, as quoted above, is the equivalent of driving an average car non-stop for 3,583 years or flying a jumbo jet non-stop for 2.91 years.

How many of us really know the environmental impact of every last thing we buy? How many of can calculate our carbon footprint with real accuracy? We must all do our best with the information we have and continue to be open to learning as more information becomes available.

This is why Exeter City Council’s decision to turn Northbrook Approach golf course into a wild parkland is such an important one. Not only is it going to sequester more carbon and provide a fertile habitat for essential pollinators and other wildlife, it will encourage a reconnection between people and nature within the city.

This decision, along with the many other green initiatives the Council is pursuing, demonstrates a commitment to environmental education and policies that will help to shape a better future – not only for Exeter’s residents, but inevitably for everyone.

Another significant part of this effort will be made in improving the waste and recycling service.

Currently, taking into account collecting and sorting the recycling and then sending it to reprocessors for recycling, Exeter’s service saves 1,422 tonnes per year of CO2 – or, to put it another way, if we sent everything to Energy from Waste instead, our carbon footprint would be larger by 1,422 tonnes.

That’s the same amount of carbon per year that an average car would produce if it drove for 6.31 years non-stop. Or, to put it another way: if ECC sent everything it sorts for recycling to Energy from Waste instead, this would result in the destruction of an additional 4,226 square metres of Arctic ice.

There is the potential – through improvements to the service including the collection of food waste and glass, increased recycling collection frequency to weekly, investment in the modernisation of the Materials Reclamation Facility and in collection vehicles so that less recycling gets rejected – to reduce emissions by a further 2,169 tonnes to an overall saving of 3,591 tonnes.

That same car would have to drive for 15.93 years straight to pump out the equivalent gasses. We would be saving the equivalent of 10,773 square metres of Arctic ice.

Our ambition is to see this happen – to do more than our bit and to stand behind all efforts to make living and working in Exeter a part of positive change.

Carbon equivalences taken from:

YouSustain: http://www.yousustain.com/footprint/howmuchco2?co2=3591+tonnes
Science: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6313/747