How Bad Are Bananas?: The carbon footprint of everything [Paperback]

I love popular science books and programmes. As a trained scientist, who still does useful but not challenging science at work, (I'm a school lab technician), at best, these books are great at keeping the science bit of your brain ticking over while managing to also entertain, but it's great when you learn new things from them and use that to spark off question and debate.

That was definitely the case with this book. Berners-Lee which I shall abbreviate to B-L, (by the way, I was unable to find out whether he is related to Sir Tim B-L, the creator of the interweb - does anyone know?), is a environmental expert in calculating the total carbon footprint of everything. The important word here is `everything'. His method factors in not just manufacturing, but the footprint of the ingredients too and the corporations that make and sell things, plus the footprint of the item in use through to its eventual disposal - ie the total contribution of an item to global warming (its CO2e - equivalent). This complete way of looking at things throws up some amazing results, but more on that in a minute.

After the explanatory introductions, the book is presented in increasing CO2e from under 10g to 1 million tonnes and beyond, and is compared against a target lifestyle of up to ten tonnes per year for the average human. One thing B-L is clear on is that in aiming to improve our own carbon footprints we should all apply a sense of scale. What good is choosing a better hand-drying option when you spend your life on planes? But having said that, he says we should pick our battles, and work out where we can get the best return for our efforts. It was fascinating reading, although I found the lower CO2e first half more interesting than the big emitters at the end as these small things have a daily visible impact. B-L has a style that is fairly serious and earnest, but with occasional jocularity to keep things light. I'd recommend this book to anyone thinking about what they can do to green their lifestyle in small steps - which all add up eventually.

Let me share just a few of the many surprising facts I got from this book:

- The supermarket plastic bag is not so bad! It represents around one thousandnth of the CO2e of a typical shop, and ironically has less impact than a paper bag. Paper uses more paper and glue for equivalent strength, and the manufacturing process has more impact too.
- Bananas aren't actually that bad as they're usually shipped - on ships. It's the air-freighted asparagus and continental out of season hothouse tomatoes that are amongst the worst fruit and veg. Out of season and air-freighted fruit and veg have around 100x the CO2e of locally grown in-season produce.
- But what about cycling one mile? Assuming the cyclist burns around 50 calories per mile... If you're looking at the total CO2e you need to consider what provides the energy that you put into cycling - ie what you eat! If you're a fan of bananas, that'll produce around 65 grammes of CO2. If you had a bacon butty - it's around 200g of CO2. If you had a plate of air-freighted asparagus the CO2e is 2.8 kilogrammes.

It's all good fun, but I've learned a lot and will put lots of little bits into action in the future . As the author suggests, it will, (now I've read it), make an ideal toilet book!

When it comes to climate change, I have often wondered what I should worry about. If I am going to change my carbon footprint, where should I put the effort in? How can I make sure I "don't sweat the small stuff?" This book helped me distinguish the big issues--the ones where I really need to focus, and the small ones that don't make much difference. Mike Berners-Lee approaches the whole subject with a light-heartedness and humour, so I never felt that he was preaching to me... More like we were having a chat.

Did you know that your plastic bags account for one thousandth of the foot print of the average weekly shop? Supermarkets would have you think it's a far bigger deal than that... But no, hidden on the supermarket shelves are some things with a truly extraordinary footprint.

The book is laid out in bite sized chucks, with each chapter dealing with things that have a bigger impact than the previous. Just flicking through the contents pages, I started to get a sense for where the big issues are. My copy of this book will get very well thumbed, and well quoted. Think I'll either be lending it out, or getting more copies come Christmas time.

This is a great book - informative, thought provoking and fun.

It tells us what we need to know about the impact of the types of products we buy and the sorts of things we do. I was particularly impressed with the layout, ranking the items in ascending order is a great idea - it gives proper perspective to which things have the biggest influence on our carbon footprints.

The writing style is clear and conversational - never judgmental or labouring the point - the book left me feeling empowered rather than guilty.

Zestier than "Driving Over Lemons" fruitier than "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit", "How Bad Are Bananas" earns a prime place on my bookshelf, where the books I expect frequently to refer to reside.