New eco-Awareness site from The Guardian

[Tread_Lightly]

Hello all,

I'm doing some work for The Guardian on their new eco-awareness website, 'Tread Lightly'. I'd like to hear any comments you might have about the site, the pledging system or about the issues surrounding it

Please post your comments here and feel free to be as brutally honest as you like

Thanks in advance...


Tread Lightly | Environment | Guardian Unlimited


About Tread lightly

Do you want to live a more low-carbon lifestyle, but are unsure where to start?

Tread lightly is a community of people committed to reducing their CO2 emissions through making weekly pledges and recording their actions against their pledges.

This will enable people to step up their efforts to reduce their own CO2 emissions, and also to track the combined efforts of the community.

How to get involved

We are starting with an easy pledge - asking users to switch to energy-efficient lightbulbs. You can choose your level of commitment for each pledge - light, medium or heavy user.

Each week, on a Friday, there will be a new pledge, such as turning appliances off standby, washing clothes at a lower temperature or using the car less frequently. You can also suggest pledges you think the community should make on our blog.


Edit: Post OK'ed by admin

[Paul mabbott]

Two minor points.
I do appreciate that you are after change but I suspect that some of us will be keying 'already do' so will appear in the summary calculation as doing nothing.

When I briefly went on the site, I couldn't find anyway to make comments so pleased that you're seeking them here!

But worth the effort - an intelligible site although I think that there is considerable simplification of the problem .... perhaps unavoidable ....

There has, actually, already been some discussion on this:
How big is your ecological footprint ?........

[Tread_Lightly]

Originally Posted by Paul mabbott

Two minor points.
I do appreciate that you are after change but I suspect that some of us will be keying 'already' do will appear in the summary calculation as doing nothing.

When I briefly went on the site, I couldn't find anyway to make comments so pleased that you're seeking them here!

There has, actually, already been some discussion on this:
How big is your ecological footprint ?........

thanks for taking a look Paul - I'll certainly be passing all comments back to the Guardian, so please don't feel they fall on deaf ears

[Paul mabbott]

Thanks. As mentioned on the thread cited, one of the great problems with these carbon footprint calculations is how many people are responsible for the carbon use. One cannot presume a nuclear family, a "standard" four member family or even a family at all. The problem is that (e.g.) "my" useage is really that of the household (on most of the items logged) and therefore should be divided by 2, 3, 4 depending who is at home. Similarly, I suspect that the Gnauriad will have a question/pledge about transport - many of the 'footprint' calculations fall down here because of shared usage ... I've noted that I don't drive any vehicle (not even a bike nowadays) but I do take a lift in the car when it's offered .... so that ups my carbon usage but, of course, it reduces the usage of the driver since they will be then be a half-person per kilometre of petrol usage!
None of this is strictly relevent to the Graunidan scheme but may have an effect on how it is received by the reader ....

[RobSutton]

Originally Posted by Paul mabbott

........ one of the great problems with these carbon footprint calculations is how many people are responsible for the carbon use............

Another problem is that by putting the same information into different "calculators" you can end up with wildly different estimates of your footprint. It seems to be even worse if you try and use the various "offsetting" sites to try and calculate how much it would cost to offset your footprint.

[Tread_Lightly]

Originally Posted by RobSutton

Another problem is that by putting the same information into different "calculators" you can end up with wildly different estimates of your footprint. It seems to be even worse if you try and use the various "offsetting" sites to try and calculate how much it would cost to offset your footprint.

what is the biggest variation you have found between calculators?

[StuartDH]

I'd think that this is most likely be associated with flights, as multipliers are added to the CO2 produced to make allowances for the fact that the CO2 is dispersed at altitude and therefore directly into the atmosphere. DEFRA have their own figures of 0.18kg CO2 per pkm short haul and 0.11kg for long haul, but some offsetting companies have been know to go way beyond these figures. As a result, putting in your flight details about your annual holiday can get very different results, depending on the calculators you use

[Tread_Lightly]

great - thank you Stuart

Any other comments, folks?