CO2 Saved by Making Your Own Music
Entertainment devices such as CD and MP3 players are nowhere near as energy intensive as large home appliances. However enough of us listen to music everyday, whether it's on the radio, using our CD players or via our PCs (and usually far more often than we'd do our laundry) for it to add up. By playing just an hour less each day, we'd each save over 1 kg of CO2 each month.
Let's examine how various common music-making devices compare.
Carbon emitted by various devices
Average power consumption:
CD Player - 85W
Radio - 15W
Hi-fi - 200W
PCs playing music - 60W
MP3 players - 3.6W
So for 1 hour's play, the amount of CO2 emitted by each is:
CD Player - 0.045 kg CO2 or 45 grams
Radio - 0.008 kg CO2 or 8 grams
Hi fi- 0.105 kg CO2 or 105 grams
Desktop PC-- 0.03 kg CO2 or 30 grams
MP3 player - 0.002 kg CO2 or 2 grams
This is an average of 38g of CO2 emitted per hour.
This might not seem like much, but thinking about how much music we listen to over the course of a week or month, the savings do add up. Consider that just in the portable MP3 player category, the iPod alone had sold nearly 129 million units by the end of 2007
and is expected to surpass combined Walkman and Discman sales of nearly 309 million units
.
Who needs electronic audio devices anyway when we were all born with state-of-the-art music machines with a battery life of about 85 years (if we're lucky) and an infinite library of tunes to choose from? Jack Reacher, the hero of Lee Child's rather fine thriller "Killing Floor"
explains:
"People spend thousands of dollars on stereos. Sometimes tens of thousands. There is a specialist industry right here in the States which builds stereo gear to a standard you wouldn't believe. Tubed amplifiers which cost more than a house. Speakers taller than me. Cables thicker than a garden hose. Some army guys had that stuff. I'd heard it on bases around the world. Wonderful. But they were wasting their money. Because the best stereo in the world is free. Inside your head. It sounds as good as you want it to. As loud as you want it to be."
So the next time you're thinking of listening to songs on the radio or sticking a track on the hi-fi or plugging your ear-pods into your iPod... don't. Amp up your internal music system instead. Or if that's too hi-fidelity for you, just hum or whistle the songs to yourself. If people around you find that annoying, so much the better.
There are health benefits to not listening to iPods too. A recent report put MP3 players under the spotlight because of concerns over hearing damage. Typical sound levels for MP3 players such as iPods are on a par with industrial sound sources.
At the upper volume levels, 100 decibels is commonplace and equivalent to the noise level of an unsilenced pneumatic drill. An hour's listening at this intensity is the maximum for avoiding hearing damage. A sound level of 115 decibels is achievable on many popular MP3 players and at this level, safe exposure is limited to 15 minutes. This is similar in intensity to a rock concert or chain saw.
So put aside your music-making device and try making your own music for a little while - you might even enjoy it and it might help save your hearing as well as CO2.
