Emissions are up in our household

As you may have heard, I recently became a father. Our little bundle of fresh produce, Tom, came into the world at the end of July and has been helping ensure I’m up early for work and my arm muscles are well exercised.

So far, the experience has been magical, euphoric, tiring and rewarding, not to mention completely life-changing. The effect Tom has had on our lives is huge, but I was surprised to read that the environmental impact of having a child is also sizeable.

In his book How Bad Are Bananas?, Mike Berners-Lee discovered that the average carbon footprint of having a child was 373 tonnes – although carbon-conscious kids create just 100 tonnes of CO₂ and high-impact offspring have a lifetime footprint of 2,000 tonnes. Personally, I’d prefer not to think about all the emissions my son will create during his lifetime, but there you go.

Elsewhere in the book, Berners-Lee underlines the potential low-carbon credentials of several fruits – including apples, bananas and oranges – all of which he says can be very environmentally friendly when sourced locally but also offer climate-friendly food miles when brought in from overseas.

However, according to the book, a 250g pack of local, seasonal asparagus will set the world back 125g of CO₂, still lower than the 3.5kg incurred by the same pack airfreighted from Peru in January.

“If your entire diet were as carbon intensive as long-haul asparagus, your food would have a footprint of more than 50 tonnes: three and a half times the entire annual footprint of an average UK citizen,” says the author.

A punnet of strawberries grown in the UK, meanwhile, creates around 150g of CO₂ (600g per kilo), but glasshouse-grown punnets or those imported out of season are apparently responsible for an estimated 1.8kg (7.2kg per kilo).

Coincidentally, on the opposite page, the average disposable nappy is said to be responsible for 145g of CO₂. Don’t worry though, I’ll make sure he eats plenty of bananas.