Carbon Literacy Day of Action

Natsumi Matsuoka

At this session I learned how to approach carbon data and climate change as well as receiving certification from the Carbon Literacy Project a United Nations recognised programme! This session was hosted as part of the Carbon Literacy Day of Action a yearly event aimed at improving climate education and training. It was very worthwhile to participate, please find a reflection on the learning below.

What is carbon literacy?

It is an awareness of the carbon costs of daily activities and the ability to reduce emissions on an individual, community and organisational basis. 

We started with a word exercise to warm up!  What words with “carbon” can we think of?

I had never thought about this before, although we were able to find a lot of words, even Carbonara!

Other, more relevant ones we came up with were:

• Carbon dioxide
• Carbon footprint
• Carbon capture
• Carbon neutral
• Carbon monoxide etc..

After this exercise, we looked up and tried to identify the six greenhouse gases which are Carbon Dioxide, Methane, Nitrous Oxide, F-Gases, Ozone and Water Vapour.

Thirdly, we looked at 15 pathways to reduce emissions. We received cards of various measures and tried to put them in order from the most to least potential to reduce CO2 (Carbon Dioxide). I was surprised that solar power is the biggest solution at 200 billion tonnes, the next biggest solution is plant-rich diets and reducing food waste is the third. Plant-rich diets and food waste problems are more individual solutions. Having learnt this as a meat-eater I now consider that I will try a couple of days on a plant-rich diet each week to try and improve my CO2 emissions.

We also discussed our carbon footprint using the WWF Carbon Footprint calculator. 

During the discussion we talked about the difficulty of seeing our energy usage bills for those of us (like me) who were staying in the student accommodation. One of the issues is that the energy bills are normally included within the rent and are not visible for individuals. Also, we cannot control the light and heating in the corridors by ourselves, as these are controlled centrally. Personally, I often see many empty corridors with all the heating and lights on. I often switch them off if no one is there but sadly within the building it doesn’t seem like anyone is aware of this, or it is not clear who to report this too.

At the end of the session, we did a quiz called Carboned Out! where we had to guess which activities have the lowest emissions. I was surprised that some actions I hadn’t thought about can have a large amount of carbon emissions. For example, 50GB of data storage in a cloud for a year created 50 - 150 kg of emissions. A mortgage of 200,000 pounds with 2.5 per cent interest in a local bank for a year created between 1 and 5 tons! I realised that there are many sources of emissions in things that are usually invisible and difficult to see, such as data and everyday banking, and I wondered how many people in the world are making a conscious effort to reduce this.

Through the session it became clear to me that understanding our carbon footprint as individuals and as part of an organization can both have significance, helping us to reduce our carbon emissions. 

In summary, a collaborative effort combining policy changes, technological innovation and personal responsibility is necessary to achieve net-zero carbon emissions and address the climate crisis effectively.

This was such a collaborative session and unlike anything I have ever done before. After reflecting on what I've learned, I believe that reaching net-zero carbon emissions requires both systemic changes and individual actions. I honestly hadn’t thought about carbon literacy that deeply before, but I learned so much at this session that I will have more awareness of the issues and what I can do as an individual, and as a part of the UAL community to contribute to reducing carbon footprints in the future!

Images from the workshop: Angela Tiffany on behalf of Arts SU – see the full album on our Flickr here: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBRJeP

Natsumi Matsuoka bio

Natsumi Matsuoka is a Design Strategist and MA Innovation Management researcher at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. She combines extensive work and academic experience, with creative technological thinking to realize impactful solutions for challenges facing today's world. She relishes the opportunity to apply her skillsets for diverse issues and audiences.