Be Eco Friendly

What they don’t tell you: It’s true that animal products tend to have much higher carbon footprint than food produced from plants. Hence vegetarianism tends to be a good idea from an environmental point of view.

The devil is in the detail, however, because certain dairy products are more “carbon intensive” than some meats. In particular hard cheese, which takes a lot of milk to produce, can have a bigger footprint per kilo than chicken. So while cutting out meat – especially beef and lamb – definitely makes ecological sense, the benefit will be reduced if you make up the calories by consuming more dairy.

The most effective way to reduce the emissions of your diet is to go vegan – or as close as you can get.

via Top 10 green living myths | Duncan Clark | Environment | guardian.co.uk.

What they don’t tell you: It makes sense for individuals to use less electricity to help reduce the emissions of British power stations.

However, it’s worth bearing in mind that the total amount of CO2 that can be released by power plants and other industrial facilities across the EU between now and 2012 is fixed by the European Emissions Trading Scheme.

This means that if the UK power sector reduces its emissions, extra carbon permits get freed up for use elsewhere, such as German power stations or French cement plants. In other words, the same amount of CO2 will be released, just from different sources.

If you want to ensure that your electricity savings do make a real environmental difference, join Sandbag, a charity that will remove CO2 permits from the EU scheme to stop your good work being traded away on the carbon markets.

via Top 10 green living myths | Duncan Clark | Environment | guardian.co.uk.