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posted by martyb on Tuesday February 12 2019, @09:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the read-this-while-having-a-nice,-hot-cup-of-tea dept.

Phys.org:

When you hear about businesses with a high environmental impact or activities with a high carbon footprint, you are probably more likely to imagine heavy machinery, engines and oil rather than hairdressing. Yet hairdressing, both as a sector and as an individual activity, can have a massive carbon footprint.

Hairdressing uses high levels of hot water, energy and chemicals. Similarly, in our homes, heating hot water is typically the most energy intensive activity. For the cost of a ten-minute shower that uses an electric immersion heater, you could leave a typical television on for 20 hours.

So while it helps to turn lights and appliances off, the real gains in terms of reducing energy usage are in slashing our use of hot water. A quarter of UK emissions are residential and, of those, the vast majority come from running hot water. The longer it runs and the hotter it is, the more energy intensive (and costly) it is.

Mostly the hot water used carries a high carbon footprint, but the chemicals in shampoo don't help either.


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  • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday February 13 2019, @01:08AM (3 children)

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Wednesday February 13 2019, @01:08AM (#800417) Homepage Journal

    NOT MIL-SPEC mind you, in that I use hot water; in the Navy when aboard ship, everybody gets cold showers. Such is my understanding anyway.

    Turn on water, get wet all over. Turn off water.

    Soap up _all_ over, including shampoo in the hair.

    Turn on water, rinse off, turn off water.

    If we _all_ did it that way - I expect they do in many desert climes - Climate Change quite likely would be a far more gradual process than it presently is.

    One Last Word:

    What's the carbon footprint of one pound of animal protein as opposed to one pound of that of vegetable.

    What's the carbon footprint of either form of protein shipped in from thousands of miles away, as opposed to being produced locally?

    What's the carbon footprint of frozen or refrigerated foods vs. that of dried foods, or of most - but definitely not all - fruits and vegetables which need no cooling?

    We in America refrigerate our fresh eggs. My understanding is that eggs are _not_ refrigerated in Europe.

    To understand this, consider that eggs do just fine underneath a warm hen, even on hot days.

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 13 2019, @03:29AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 13 2019, @03:29AM (#800476)

    You're asking the wrong questions.

    What is the carbon footprint of one pound of animal protein, compared with one pound of the equivalent in terms of nutrition (complete protein/balanced amino acid) sources, with allowances for the animals replacing machinery functions?

    There's an example of a more complete assessment of an intelligent farming approach, rather than just grog-hate-carnivores boilerplate from the green rhetoric department.

    Please note that in large parts of the world, growing a complete plant protein diet is agronomically infeasible, so the vegetarian approach has massive logistical costs built in.

    The comparison of eggs being refrigerated or not is a false one. Eggs under a hen are living systems with resistance to spoilage. If they aren't fertile, they go bad and eventually explode, very aromatically.

    • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday February 13 2019, @06:44AM (1 child)

      by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Wednesday February 13 2019, @06:44AM (#800520) Homepage Journal

      Absolutely _all_ the vast majority of the world would need to obtain complete nutrition other than completely plant foods would be Cultured Milk, so as to obtain Vitamin B12.

      After quite a lot of reading on my part, discussion with a B12-Knowledgeable Soylentil, my strictly Vegan cousin as well as a Vegan Facebook Friend, I have learned that B12 is ultimately produced by bacteria but is eaten by humans in meat, fish, eggs, milk and cultured milks as yogurt and keffir.

      Cultured Milk is a particularly rich B12 source, so if we keep some dairy cows around, or goats or perhaps some yaks, then all we need otherwise is - yes: complete - protein, fruits and vegetables. While there's quite a lot of controversy regarding grains, my take is that grains are indeed desirable.

      For complete protein, for the most part pairs of incomplete protein-bearing foods will do, such as the rice and beans or corn and beans that most Mexicans eat.

      In my own independent researches, I concluded that I was woefully deficient in the Amino Acid l-Tryptophan. I fixed that by eating lots of Tofu, as Soy is rich in the stuff, as well as Hummus, chickpeas and sesame seed having lots of B12 as well.

      Now I _will_ grant you that consumption of meat or fish makes it quite a lot _easier_ for the individual to obtain the nutrients he requires. But "easier" only in a strictly _local_ sense. When considering the effort of our food supply, transport, storage and sales system as a _whole_, a nice juicy steak or A Chicken In Every Pot require quite a lot more effort than do, say, rice and beans.

      --
      Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 13 2019, @04:55PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 13 2019, @04:55PM (#800637)

        Re: B12. Yes, it's important. Yes, you can get it from non-animal sources, including bacterial cultures and some fungi. I didn't raise the point because it's a relatively minor issue in terms of carbon footprints, which is where this started. For the brits and colonials in the audience, Marmite has plentiful B12 as well.

        You state, correctly, that a blend of foods will do the job on protein completion. What you completely avoid is the question of agronomic feasibility. Large parts of the world are simply not agronomically capable of feeding their human population a complete protein, vegetarian diet. In fact some parts (UK, for example) are unlikely to be able to feed themselves above famine levels without massive imports of food or energy. Great while they could pour petrochemicals from the North Sea into their economy, not so great as it starts to run lower.

        Thus we return to the question of: What is the carbon footprint of one pound of animal protein, compared with one pound of the equivalent in terms of nutrition (complete protein/balanced amino acid) sources, with allowances for the animals replacing machinery functions?

        Just handwaving about rice and beans without checking which rice and which beans can be grown where with what rates of returns using which techniques and with what amounts of labour and automation, as opposed to (for example) oxen for draught and sheep for land clearing (hence the pound for pound calculation being complicated) doesn't cut the mustard.