Keen to be Green?

I read an article a while ago about a guy who was addicted to measuring his carbon footprint.

In Poland I've had the opportunity to become a bit self-righteous about it all. I sold my car last year, I don't eat meat, and now make most of my journeys by public transport. We live in a smallish apartment, don't have too many electrical products, and unlike my life in the UK I no longer spend all of my day dodging between every office appliance known to man - the computer, printer, kettle, photocopier, kettle, shredder, kettle and so on.

I figured that me, Amy and Audrey probably ARE pretty green. Ok, we've not gone the whole hog. I know we should be using terry nappies, but I'm sure I read somewhere that the power generated in washing them was more wasteful than the landfill that Audrey's disposables take up. I'm confident the Pampers will biodegrade in about 1,000 years anyway.

I fired up(!?) a couple of sites to see if my suspicion was right, had we become some kind of eco-warriors without really trying?

One site gave our family a carbon footprint of 4.6 tonnes of CO2 a year. Another at 6 tonnes. Either way we were below the national average. I turned the heater and the TV on to celebrate. A few of the other sites I looked at offered us redemption. I could choose to plant trees for us either in the UK or abroad to heal the earth from our wasteful ways. From what I could see I needed to plant approximately 8 trees - shrubbery would get us off the hook!

Then I remembered that we were BELOW the average. Having to endure the Polish public transport system meant that we weren't big offenders anyway. How many of those other people who every day splashed puddles over me and Audrey's pram while driving by in their 4x4's with shaded windows were also out there planting coppices?

Somehow the whole thing all felt a bit too simple anyway - were people really looking to offset carbon or just offset guilt.

Then I realised that in August the three of us are flying to Australia (10,000 miles or 15,500k) - it dashed my calculations a bit, and my sanctimonious attitude along with it - I'll just have to remember to plant half a dozen or so eucalyptus trees once the plane lands.