greg334
Veteran Expediter
Ok I am inspired by the Hollywood types and just finished watching Cameron Diaz on the TV talking about how important it is to become Carbon Neutral, so I thought about this for a while and realize that with the property I own and my friends’ property with all the trees we have planted on all the property is not enough – maybe it is the guilt feelings I have that I damage the fragile ecosystem, I just don’t know.
So I calculated what I need to do to get to the state I can consider being Carbon Neutral and the related cost.
As an average person consuming an average amount of stuff, owning an average truck and producing the average amount of CO2, (109.72 tons of CO2) I will need to plant 478 ‘native’ trees in Australia to off set my CO2 production. Now this number increases with my truck, which produces 125% more CO2, which brings my total of ‘native’ trees to plant in Australia to 1076 trees. If I include my van, I have to add another 448 ‘native’ trees to plant in Australia which leaves me with 1523 ‘native’ trees to plant in Australia.
But I can’t possibly go to Australia and buy the land to plant trees but I can turn to one of many companies that do this for me.
One company will plant a tree for $2.37US ($3AUD) which at the required amount of trees needed to offset my existence, it will cost me a mere $4159.15US to plant the ‘native’ trees in Australia for me. Now I will not own these trees, I can’t claim them nor can I harvest them if I need wood for heat because I decided to get rid of that bad co2 creating furnace that came with the house but at least I will sleep better at night.
But this brings up a question that I asked the neighborhood ecologist; is it better to buy a new vehicle or a used vehicle that is more than 35 years old?
The bizarre look I got from her was worth a $100 but I think I confused her a lot by the justification I made for the used older vehicle.
Here is what I said.
On one hand I have a vehicle that was built in 1964. It has maybe 10lbs of plastic in it, weighs at 2700 lbs and has a 2.25 liter engine, most of it is steel but the body panels are aluminum with minimal of vinyl and rubber.
On the other hand I have a brand new vehicle that weighs the same, has the same displacement but is made up of 21% plastic and 10% fiber glass with the remainder of vinyl and rubber and steel.
I said knowing that the new car has all that plastic and fiberglass in it, about 40% of it can not be recycled without expending a lot of energy, the new car is not as environmentally friendly as it would seem to be in comparison to the older used vehicle. I added that the fact that most vehicles are made in a decentralized factory system today, there is already a set amount of CO2 added to the environment due to transporting the parts, the people traveling to the factory and a lot of other things like VOCs from the plastic parts manufacturing - which seems to be missed when vehcle emissions is talk about. The older used Vehicle in this example is almost 100% recylable, with only the vinyl and rubber being the most difficult thing to recycle.
She is going to resreach all of this and get back to me to make sure I am wrong.
So I calculated what I need to do to get to the state I can consider being Carbon Neutral and the related cost.
As an average person consuming an average amount of stuff, owning an average truck and producing the average amount of CO2, (109.72 tons of CO2) I will need to plant 478 ‘native’ trees in Australia to off set my CO2 production. Now this number increases with my truck, which produces 125% more CO2, which brings my total of ‘native’ trees to plant in Australia to 1076 trees. If I include my van, I have to add another 448 ‘native’ trees to plant in Australia which leaves me with 1523 ‘native’ trees to plant in Australia.
But I can’t possibly go to Australia and buy the land to plant trees but I can turn to one of many companies that do this for me.
One company will plant a tree for $2.37US ($3AUD) which at the required amount of trees needed to offset my existence, it will cost me a mere $4159.15US to plant the ‘native’ trees in Australia for me. Now I will not own these trees, I can’t claim them nor can I harvest them if I need wood for heat because I decided to get rid of that bad co2 creating furnace that came with the house but at least I will sleep better at night.
But this brings up a question that I asked the neighborhood ecologist; is it better to buy a new vehicle or a used vehicle that is more than 35 years old?
The bizarre look I got from her was worth a $100 but I think I confused her a lot by the justification I made for the used older vehicle.
Here is what I said.
On one hand I have a vehicle that was built in 1964. It has maybe 10lbs of plastic in it, weighs at 2700 lbs and has a 2.25 liter engine, most of it is steel but the body panels are aluminum with minimal of vinyl and rubber.
On the other hand I have a brand new vehicle that weighs the same, has the same displacement but is made up of 21% plastic and 10% fiber glass with the remainder of vinyl and rubber and steel.
I said knowing that the new car has all that plastic and fiberglass in it, about 40% of it can not be recycled without expending a lot of energy, the new car is not as environmentally friendly as it would seem to be in comparison to the older used vehicle. I added that the fact that most vehicles are made in a decentralized factory system today, there is already a set amount of CO2 added to the environment due to transporting the parts, the people traveling to the factory and a lot of other things like VOCs from the plastic parts manufacturing - which seems to be missed when vehcle emissions is talk about. The older used Vehicle in this example is almost 100% recylable, with only the vinyl and rubber being the most difficult thing to recycle.
She is going to resreach all of this and get back to me to make sure I am wrong.