This is a tough one, the subject is open to as many opinions as there are bands appearing at this weekend’s V Festival (where the fcuk did that come from?).<\/p>\n
The story in bullets:
\n* Wiltshire student (Tom Tapper)
\n* Aiming to cycle John O’Groats to Land’s End
\n* On-board solar panel will recharge their gadgets
\n* Aiming to make the journey zero-carbon<\/p>\n
But this isn’t right, is it?<\/p>\n
By discounting the carbon footprint that the build\/manufacture of everything he wears, rides, uses and cycles upon,<\/em> isn’t Tom Tapper distorting the true picture?<\/p>\n Otherwise it’s like the situation of an astronaut standing on the International Space Station throwing a small metal box at the sun and making a declaration that the journey of the box (from ISS to the sun) is a zero-carbon journey.<\/p>\n Whereas\u00c2\u00a0if we consider\u00c2\u00a0the process by which the box and the astronaut came to be on the ISS in the first place, the journey is far<\/em> from zero-carbon.<\/p>\n Tom Tapper (and his team) are using modern bicycles made in an intensive industrial process. The ingredients include carbon fibre. The tyres are made from various manufactured materials and will include rubber – tapped in and transported from trees in far-away, exotic forests before being transported thousands of miles and put through an industrial process. His clothes will also have been manufactured in industrial processes (and probably manufactured in and transported from foreign countries).<\/p>\n And – oh boy – let’s not even think about the carbon footprint that the manufacture of solar panels produces!<\/p>\n Hmmm…<\/p>\n So not a very zero-carbon journey at all.<\/p>\n