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

`I can't remember the last time I read a book that was more fascinating and useful and enjoyable'
--Bill Bryson

It is terrific. I can't remember the last time I read a book that was more fascinating and useful and enjoyable all at the same time. --Bill Bryson

Mike Berners-Lee knows more about carbon footprints than anyone else in the UK. Enjoyable, fun to read and scientifically robust. A triumph of popular science writing --Chris Goodall,author,Ten Technologies to fix Energy and Climate

An engaging book that manages to present serious science without preaching. --New Scientist

Curiously fascinating to both climate geeks and well-rounded human beings alike. - --Franny Armstrong, Director of The Age of Stupid and founder of 10:10

A book that somehow made me laugh while telling me deeply serious things
--Peter Lipman, Director of SUSTRANS

Packed full of information yet always entertaining. From text messages and plastic bags to wars and volcanoes, How Bad Are Bananas? has the carbon answers we need

From a text message to a war, from a Valentine's rose to a flight or even having a child, How Bad are Bananas? gives us the carbon answers we need and provides plenty of revelations. By talking through a hundred or so items, Mike Berners-Lee sets out to give us a carbon instinct for the footprint of literally anything we do, buy and think about. He helps us pick our battles by laying out the orders of magnitude. The book ranges from the everyday (foods, books, plastic bags, bikes, flights, baths...) and the global (deforestation, data centres, rice production, the World Cup, volcanoes, ...) Be warned, some of the things you thought you knew about green living may be about to be turned on their head. Never preachy but packed full of information and always entertaining.

We all want to do the right thing for the planet, but what's the real impact of each of the things we do and buy? We hear a lot about driving and flying, but what about sending a text message, buying a cappucino or going for a swim? How do apples compare to oranges or bananas, buying a newspaper with surfing the internet, or cut flowers with house plants? And what about the big things? How much CO2 is generated by a bushfire, a volcano, or a war? Packed full of information yet always entertaining, How Bad Are Bananas? comes up with the answers we need and provides plenty of revelations. Be warned: everything you thought you knew about green living is about to be turned on its head.

MIKE BERNERS-LEE is the founding director of an associate company of Lancaster University which specialises in organisational responses to climate change.