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All things must change when the consumer changes

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Drink water to reduce CO2 emissions?

December 27, 2021 by Peter 2 Comments

Sometimes it is extremely easy to reduce CO2 emissions and one way to do that is to simply drink water, or tap water to be more specific. Surely there will be some of you asking how can drinking water help reduce CO2 emissions? Well that’s easy to explain and I’ll do that in a moment. Others will be thinking that drinking water isn’t very interesting and they’d rather drink something else. It’s in these circumstances that I wonder if the world is ready to reduce pollution and slow the effects of climate change. Until someone has invented a better solution, all we can do right now is reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to buy us some extra time. It’s going to be a bit inconvenient for a while. Following on from COP26, it’s clear we have to do everything we can to reduce emissions and that includes the personal choices of all of us. Everything helps and collectively we need to get emissions of greenhouse gases down very quickly.

Drink water to reduce CO2 emissions?
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

How does drinking water reduce CO2 emissions?

Obviously, the direct action of drinking water does not reduce CO2 emissions, it’s the indirect consequence of us not drinking something else that gives the reduction of emissions. By drinking anything else that had to be grown, harvested, modified in a factory, packaged, shipped and purchased, we’re generally creating CO2 emissions and other forms of pollution at every step of the way. If we simply fill a glass with water from the tap and drink that, we’re mostly eliminating these emissions and pollution.

How would this affect us?

Since a lot of the things we drink (other than water) contain sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, caffeine, artificial sweeteners, artificial colourants, alcohol and other chemicals, drinking water from the tap would actually be better for us. Water is all our body needs when it comes to fluids. Anything else we drink is just to satisfy certain urges, to fit in with expected social norms or as a response to effective advertising. Are any of those things really a good reason to reinforce the climate negative effects of our societies pollution habits?

Drinking tap water would also save us, collectively, an enormous amount of money. Some might say this would be bad for the economy. That can’t really be true can it? Let’s examine this a little.

What would happen is the whole world started drinking only water from “now”?

Let’s imagine a crazy world where every single person in the world suddenly started to drink only tap water from now on (I acknowledge that some places don’t have access to clean water – this is terrible, and should be of concern to the whole global human community). Nothing else was consumed. What would happen?

One thing for sure, some very large companies would go broke. For example, Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Red Bull. Coca-Cola’s revenue in 2019 was 37 billion US dollars. The global alcohol market is somewhere between 0.5 and 1.5 trillion US dollars depending on how it’s measured. So, if the world all began to drink only water, these businesses and industries would fail. In the short term, many people would be out of work and the GDP of some countries would be significantly affected.

That appears to be a bad situation, but can drinking water really be bad for the economy? A successful economy is just one where money flows round and round continuously and creates the possibility for people or businesses to attract more customers when superior products and services are offered. If everyone started drinking water, the average consumer would now have more money in their pockets and would start spending this on other things. After a period of adjustment, which might be rough for a while, everything would stabilise.

The bottom line is that a successful economy cannot hinge directly on people drinking any particular beverage.

Other surprising outcomes

If the whole world starting drinking simple water exclusively, then nobody would need to boil a kettle for a cup of tea or coffee. What would that mean? Let’s consider the United Kingdom and do a little math. An average kettle uses about 2000 Watts of power and lets say it is used for only one minute to boil water for one cup.

An article from Wales Online suggests that 56 million Brits drink on average 1.78 cups of tea per day before lockdown. The articles says it’s almost double that during lockdown, but I’ll be conservative here and use the pre-lockdown numbers. I’ll also assume it’s the same average consumption for coffee. So, we have 56 million people drinking on average 3.56 cups of tea or coffee per day.

Assuming one minute of boiling time per cup, that’s the equivalent of having 138,000 kettles running continuously all day long. If a reasonably powerful LED light bulb uses 10 Watts, that’s the equivalent of having 27 million LED bulbs burning continuously. Based on the UK average CO2 emissions from electricity (which is dropping every year), that’s the equivalent of 85 tonnes of CO2 per hour (let me know if I’ve got the math wrong!), or about 750,000 tonnes per year. This is less than a quarter of 1% of the UK’s total CO2 emissions, but it’s only from heating the water to drink tea and coffee, not including the production, packaging and shipping (and milk!) involved as well.

COP26 and Irn Bru

Based on everything I’ve said above, I was shocked to see the representatives at COP26 drinking Irn Bru. Apparently the company behind Irn Bru was allowed to sponsor the soft drinks and water at COP26 because Irn Bru is a “national champion” of Scotland. Is there a disconnect from reality here? The most important meeting in the world to tackle the emergency in front of us and the delegates at the meeting were given Irn Bru as a common drinking option, and the organisers were proud of it! Fact is that such drinks aren’t necessary and they create additional CO2 emissions. Could the organisers of COP26 have considered that?

This would have been a great forum for showcasing how simple personal choices can have an immediate impact on greenhouse gas emissions, but it was missed. If tap water was the only thing available at COP26 and there was a news article on that, could that have had an impact?

Where to from here?

In the spirit of Use 10 Percent Less, this is not an all or nothing issue. We all don’t have to switch to water only right now. The real point of this article is to give you reason to consider choosing simple water more often and avoiding the options that contribute to the climate emergency we’re battling. Can you drink 10 percent less manufactured beverages? That can’t be too hard can it? Then, could you drink 10 percent less again?

If we can do this, we’ll save money, be a bit healthier and reduce greenhouse gas emissions all at the same time.

Related Links

  • ‘An emblem of Scotland’: how Irn-Bru stole the show at Cop26 – from The Guardian
  • Emissions from home energy use – from carbonindependent.org
  • Record-breaking 2020 becomes greenest year for Britain’s electricity

Filed Under: Climate Change, Less Pollution Tagged With: CO2, consumerism

The Power of Less – from Good Energy

December 18, 2020 by Peter 2 Comments

The Power or Less – a video from Good Energy

I’ve been a customer of Good Energy for about 5 years now and I have to say they appear to be a good, responsible, renewable energy company. I don’t have any affiliation with them at all, and I’m receiving nothing from them for writing this article (they have no idea I’m writing it). When I saw that they had recently released this short, one-minute video, “The Power of Less”, and that its message was so closely aligned with the sentiment of “Use 10 Percent Less“, I just had to post the video here. It’s only one minute long – please take a look. [Read more…] about The Power of Less – from Good Energy

Filed Under: Climate Change, Less Fossil Fuels, Less Waste, Nature Tagged With: consumerism, environment, overconsumption, renewable energy, solar, sustainability

Fairphone – a better phone option?

October 11, 2020 by Peter 2 Comments

A couple of years ago, I read an article about Fairphone in an edition of “The Big Issue” and I was fascinated. The first thing that caught my notice was that when Fairphone’s founder, Bas van Abel, first wanted to create a fair mobile phone, one of the first things he needed to do was pay a bribe in Africa to access a mine. I’d heard that the mines in Africa can be run in terrible ways for the local people (who are basically desperate for any money they can get) and this was, and still is, a major concern for me. Just because it’s in Africa and out of my sight, doesn’t mean I can just put this out of my mind and accept it.

Eventually Bas van Abel sourced ethical materials and the Fairphone dream was underway. This dream wasn’t just the sourcing of ethical materials, the bigger part of the dream was to create a phone that was modular and could be easily repaired by the owner using inexpensive spare parts. This is why the Fairphone is of interest here at use10percentless.com, it’s a phone that you’re intended to keep for much longer than the standard smart phones, hence less waste.

Obviously, I decided to buy a Fairphone. I wanted my usage of a phone to have less impact on the world. It wasn’t an easy choice because it also meant I’d be switching from an Apple iPhone to an Android based phone. I’d never used Android before. However, on the positive side, it worked out that I spent roughly half as much money on my new Fairphone compared to the iPhone I would have bought if I’d stayed with Apple. [Read more…] about Fairphone – a better phone option?

Filed Under: Less Pollution, Less Waste, Recycling Tagged With: consumerism, sustainability

Extinction of convenience

May 14, 2020 by Peter 1 Comment

The human race today, even in the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic, is addicted to convenience. It’s this addiction that is bringing us down and, with all likelihood, be the main cause of our extinction. Due to our desire for extreme convenience, we use the resources of the world with gay abandon and create enormous amounts of pollution everywhere. In response to this, the world’s environment has been changing rapidly in recent decades, as if the world is preparing for the extinction of convenience, which includes us. Our only hope is to create an “extinction of convenience” of our own, and eliminate our insatiable desire for endless convenience.

During the current coronavirus pandemic, I see a persistent desire to get back to the ways things were even though there are plenty of fantastic examples of how things could be better. The skies are clearer because there are not many planes flying, pollution from our cities has dropped dramatically, nature in many parts of the world is springing back into action and local communities are becoming stronger all over the world, just to name a few. Do we really want to go back to the way things were? People are worried about the “economy” but we really need to build a new economy rather than simply return to the old one. [Read more…] about Extinction of convenience

Filed Under: Less Fossil Fuels, Less Pollution, Less Waste, Recycling, Societal Change Tagged With: air travel, consumerism, economy, packaging, planes, plastic, sustainability

They need us more than we need them

April 13, 2020 by Peter Leave a Comment

I was surprised a few days ago to find a quote that was advocating one of the Use 10 Percent Less themes, namely “all things must change when the consumer does“. When I found the following quote in the April/May 2020 edition of the “Resurgence & Ecologist” magazine and saw “they need us more than we need them“, I was very interested.

“The corporate world will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

– Arundhati Roy, War Talk

[Read more…] about They need us more than we need them

Filed Under: Societal Change Tagged With: Arundhati Roy, consumerism, economy, sustainability

Just don’t waste – Sir David Attenborough

January 29, 2020 by Peter Leave a Comment

The amazing Sir David Attenborough gave us the very simple message of “Just don’t waste!” a couple of months ago at the BBC launch of the series “Seven Worlds, One Planet”. Here is what he said.

…the best motto to think about is not waste things. Don’t waste electricity, don’t waste paper, don’t waste food. Live the way you want to live but just don’t waste. Look after the natural world, and the animals in it, and the plants in it too. This is their planet as well as ours. Don’t waste them.

It’s such a beautiful summary of the sentiment behind the Use 10 Percent Less initiative. Modern life is very wasteful and we have been getting more and more wasteful, and more disposable, over recent decades. It’s really good to see that the disposable culture is being challenged very strongly now and that we might actually be able to start reducing our waste. [Read more…] about Just don’t waste – Sir David Attenborough

Filed Under: Less Waste Tagged With: consumerism, environment, sustainability

Our choices can release CO2 – choose wisely

October 30, 2019 by Peter Leave a Comment

Did you know that the apparently simple choices that we make every day can be leading to increased CO2 emissions? In simple terms, our choices can release CO2. It’s not all about the “big bad fossil fuel companies” as really the whole system relies on our choices, and it’s easy to see this is true.

A new smartphone

When we desire that new smartphone, especially when our current phone is still working, we’re actually releasing CO2. It takes a lot of energy (not to mention raw, natural ingredients) to create a smartphone and over half of the world’s energy is currently coming from oil and gas. So we release CO2 when we get that new smartphone. And don’t forget that using a mobile requires a network of cellular towers and banks of computers running 24-hours a day in the background to deliver those cloud services, run those games, stream that music, and monitor just about everything you do. It’s a big deal for the world.

New clothes

In the same way, when we want new clothes even though our old clothes are still good, we release CO2. Desiring that new fashion item, made by our favourite designer label who have the clothes made in bulk in a far part of the world (somewhat out of sight) and then shipped all over the world, we forget the amount energy and natural resources this system is using. Again, we’re releasing CO2. [Read more…] about Our choices can release CO2 – choose wisely

Filed Under: Climate Change, Less Fossil Fuels, Less Pollution Tagged With: air travel, CO2, consumerism

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Hi, I'm Peter Whiting. I believe if we just started consuming 10 percent less stuff, we could set the world on a much better path. And 10 percent isn't that much...

Recent Posts

  • Useless emissions, for what?
  • Drink water to reduce CO2 emissions?
  • Olio – using less by sharing
  • Renewable isn’t always good
  • The Power of Less – from Good Energy
  • Fairphone – a better phone option?
  • Buy local to reduce emissions
  • Anything but Plastic – it’s good to use less
  • Shaving without plastic
  • Extinction of convenience
  • They need us more than we need them
  • Plastic, pollution and the coronavirus
  • Concerns about HS2
  • Just don’t waste – Sir David Attenborough
  • Disposable Batteries – what a waste!
  • 250 potatoes
  • UK Climate Debate and Pollution
  • Greenpeace versus BP
  • Toothbrushes and plastic
  • Our choices can release CO2 – choose wisely

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  • Pen on Ban New Plastic
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