Carbon footprint of The Carbon Forest book project

Writing, etc through to proof stage

Paper: 3 reams (1500 sheets)

I estimate we've used 3 reams of A4 paper in the laser printer and bubble jet printer. Note: we printed double sided or on used paper.

According to http://www.baq2008.org/measures 1 ream results in 18.5 pounds of CO2 <=> 8.4 kg CO2

8.4 kg * 3 reams = 25.2 kg CO2

(According to http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~lungj/blog/?p=6 1 printed page results in 6 grams of CO2. 0.006 kg * 1500 sheets = 9 kg CO2. We chose to go with the higher number above.)

Electricity used whilst writing the book

The book was produced by 4 authors, working in their respective offices and homes so measuring the actual value is "too hard", therefroe I'll have to go with my best estimate.

I estimate the book required roughly 90 8hr days.

If we take the 2007 (latest available) average annual electricity consumption for a New Zealander (from http://worldbank.org) => 9622 kWh

9622 / 8760 (hours in a year) = 1.1 kWh per hour

90 days * 8 hours = 720 hours

1.1 kWh * 720 hrs = 792 kWh for this project

792 kWh into carboNZero -> 110 kg CO2-e

Total production emissions

135 kg CO2-e

If that is spread over 1000 books then it's 0.135 kg CO2-e per book or .000135 t CO2 per book

Printing

According to http://www.ecolibris.net/bookpublish.asp the carbon footprint of a book (2006 figures): 8.85 lbs, in carbon dioxide terms = 4 kg CO2 per book

500 books * 4kg = 2000 kg CO2

Total

135 kg CO2-e + 2000 kg CO2 = 2135 kg CO2 (per 1000 books)

So that's 2.135 tonnes CO2 all up. We offset that by buying 10 NZU from a PSFI forest in the Wiararapa. We then cancelled those unit so they could never be reused.

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