In order to produce a sustainable video diary, I’ve come up with some research for a few topics among those that we could do in everyday life.
The first issue that I came across is about power saving, how am I going to use power more efficiently; while still be able to maintain my habits. I do a lot of gaming, which requires a lot of power supply for my PC (it runs on an 800W power supply), and I’m also a heavy smoker. So I came up with the original “Cake or Pie” but with a little twist.
“Lighters or Matches”
One million matches can be made from each average-sized aspen. Therefore, three 20-a-day smokers would take about 45 years - if they lived that long - to strike their way through one tree's worth of matches. On a wider scale, the World Health Organisation says that about 15bn cigarettes are smoked every day around the world - one in three in China alone. If they were all lit with matches that would equate to 15,000 trees a day going up in smoke. (Incidentally, the tycoon founder of Swedish Match, Ivar Kreuger - who was found dead after his dealings triggered the stock market "Kreuger Crash" in 1932 - is said to have invented the superstition that it is unlucky for three people to share a light in order to get people to use more matches.) But those matches don’t require trees to be cut specifically, in order to produce them, since most manufacturer uses scrap wood.
This might be a reasonable response if all lighters used were refillable, like Zippos. But most lighters sold today are disposable. Bic, a firm that in 2005 "celebrated" the fact that it had sold its 100 billionth disposable pen, says that 4mil Bic lighters are sold worldwide every day - 1.46bn a year. It says a user can get up to 3,000 lights per lighter. Somewhat crudely, this means that, in terms of lighting cigarettes, one "tree" of matches equals 333 disposable lighters. But those lighters will end up in a landfill site or being incinerated.
An average lighter also releases about 0.25g of carbon dioxide per minute used. Not much perhaps, but its plastic - often nylon - casing, as well as the butane fuel used within, are both products of the petrochemical industry. Therefore, lighters cannot lay claim to the "carbon neutral" tag that matches made from sustainably grown timber can. Furthermore, cigarette lighter fuel is responsible for 64% of substance abuse deaths in the UK - a good enough reason not to create further demand for its widespread availability.
All this adds up to yet more reasons for smokers to try to give up, but the lesser of the evils seems to be to use matches, especially if you can establish where the timber is sourced and how the matches are produced.
For my gaming habit, it would be quite simple if turning off my computer could do the job, but apparently turning on your computer consumes more energy than leaving it on hibernate mode. However, if computer is left running in long term (even if most of the time in hibernate mode), its components will be damaged quicker since they don’t have time to release heat. As the matter of fact when one average computer is produced, an amount of waste that is 10 times the resource will also end up in landfills. Therefore, hibernate mode may seems to be the best solution so far, it does leave some unseen consequence.
Another issue that came across my mind was recycling.
There is some debate over whether recycling is economically efficient. Municipalities often see fiscal benefits from implementing recycling programs, largely due to the reduced landfill costs. A study conducted by the Technical University of Denmark found that in 83% of cases, recycling is the most efficient method to dispose of household waste. However, a 2004 assessment by the Danish Environmental Assessment Institute concluded that incineration was the most effective method for disposing of drink containers, even aluminum ones.
For example, recycling aluminum uses only 5% of the energy required by virgin production; glass, paper and metals have less dramatic but very significant energy savings when recycled feedstock is used.
Material Energy Savings Air Pollution Savings
Aluminium 95% 95%
Cardboard 24% -
Glass 5-30% 20%
Paper 40% 73%
Plastic 70% -
Steel 60% -
