Re-consume your old things - find a brand new use for them - Wiki Thing

Carbon saved by re-consuming your old things or donating them so other people can

It's amazing what things can be transformed into with just a little thought and ingenuity. Finding new uses for our old things makes the most of the things we have and importantly saves them from ending up in landfill sites. Old containers can be re-consumed as planters or storage for tools; old trainers or worn-out tyres can be turned into playground surfaces. Plastic bottles can be transformed into everything from a winter fleece to bags to beautiful lighting.

Physical products use up valuable resources and are responsible for carbon emissions during their manufacture, distribution and disposal. Based on a range of data, we've calculated that the carbon embedded within an average product is approximately 9.73 kg per item. See here for the methodology behind this figure.

We have made the assumption that any energy and associated emissions required to rework the item will be balanced out by the emissions that would have been generated by the object in landfill/incineration. However we also need to take into account larger items like computers or furniture as the carbon embedded within these will be significantly more.

If you have an item you no longer want or can find a use for, like clothes, furniture, electrical goods or an old computer - let it be re-consumed by someone else and pass it on to someone who'll get as much use out of it as you did. The average carbon embedded within items we donate is 98.5 kg CO2 (see below for calculation), so on average the CO2 saved by either re-consuming items yourself or allowing someone else to = (98.5 + 9.73)/2 = 54.12 kg CO2 per item.

Carbon saved by donating unwanted items to other people

We all have lots of things cluttering up cupboards and lurking in lofts, from PCs and other electronics to old books or board games. Gadgets and computers in particular pile up; according to Moore's Law the processing power of computers doubles roughly every 18 months to 2 years. ¹ This is born out by consumer behaviour, PCs are replaced around every 2 years, whereas a typical mobile will last around 18 months before it is upgraded. Around 20 million PCs are discarded in the US every year, ² and we produce over a million tons of electronic waste in the UK annually. If landfilled they can leach hazardous materials such as lead, mercury and other toxic elements and chemicals. ³

Passing on usable items helps protect the environment, and helps other people out too.

Carbon saved by donating unwanted items:

The range of things we can donate is endless, therefore to gather a representative broad carbon saving we have examined the CO2 embedded within common products:

Books: On average book 10 kg CO2.
CD: 10 kg CO2.
Mobile Phones: Various sources (listed within footnotes) have cited CO2 emissions embedded within a mobile as around 12 kg, 20 kg and 60 kg per phone. We have decided to use the median value of 20 kg CO2.

Computers: A UN study ⁴found that a desktop computer and CRT screen (weighing 24kg) uses ten times its own weight in fossil fuels during manufacture, whereas a car or fridge uses 1 or 2 times its weight in fossil fuels. Fossil fuels emit around 3 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of fuel, so carbon emissions due to PC = 240 x 3 = 720 kg CO2.

Cookers: 250 kg CO2 as cited in 'How to live a low carbon life' by Chris Goodall.

Clothes: Every kg of clothes diverted from landfill saves 8 kg of CO2.

Furniture: Assuming a small piece of furniture weighs 10 kg, this saves 15 kg CO2

Creating an average carbon saving:
Small items save around 12.6 kg CO2 each on average, or 13 kg CO2 approx. A collection of small items may save around 60 kg CO2.

Larger items can save around 485 kg CO2 on average.

Based on the fact that larger donations will be rarer, PCs for example are replaced on average every 2 years, it makes sense to weight the final emission values accordingly.

Assuming that for the average person, one in ten donations will be a large object (1:10 = large:small).
Large object (1/11 x 485) +
Smaller object (10/11 x 60)
= 44.0 + 54.5
=98.5 kg CO2 approx per donation.

Footnotes

Footnotes

Reference Notes

1 http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070918/184633.shtml

2 http://www.recycling-guide.org.uk/computers.html

3 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6254816.stm

4 http://update.unu.edu/archive/issue31_5.htm