Let’s say you’re eschewing car travel to walk up Campden Hill Road, from Kensington to Notting Hill, London. Wearing a pair of Nike Air Force Ones, you are drawn uphill by memories of the mythical Geales for fish & chips and sticky toffee pudding, when out of nowhere you step in a pile of human feces on the street that entered the street-shitter’s GI system as a Double Big Mac Happy Meal.
What’s the carbon footprint of the fecal footprint?
THE SHOE
producing 1 pair of Nike Air Force Ones = driving 128 kilometres
Rubber soles (oil) + molded plastic supports (oil) + leather uppers (animal) + nylon mesh (oil) + spandex infused cotton laces (oil + trees) + cardboard shoe box (trees) + cargo ship across ocean (oil) + online shop (electricity = oil) + …
THE SHIT eating 1 UK Big Mac meal = driving 8 kilometers
Burgers (animals + oil) + Lettuce from Holland (oil) + pickles from Turkey (oil) + plastic Happy Meal toy (oil) + box & coated food wrappers (trees + oil) + french fries (Silly Putty) +…
Yes, Virginia, there is Silly Putty in McDonald’s fries. The FDA cleared dimethylpolysiloxane for use as an an “anti-foaming agent” sometime in the 20th century. Being able to throw something frozen into a deep fryer without the oil exploding is the unsung hero of space-age short-order prep. No thawing necessary. Saves time and money. A Hamburglar’s dream! Allows the assembly line to move faster. And faster. And faster. Until…
The fastest food yet!
Ah, fuck it. There’s beef flavor in them, too, so at least it’s less Silly and more Beefy Putty.
Tbf, the average American walks approx. 1.5 miles / day. So, with the Air Force Ones’ carbon footprint equivalent of 80 miles driving, the shoes are carbon “neutral” after wearing them exclusively for 53 days.
Of course, how long a rubber swoosh takes to biodegrade 100% in a landfill is a whole other footprint…
Praying eventually there’s an electric Concorde supersonic jet or QE2 to go trans-continental, because right now electrified travel locks us all on land-masses between oceans, and separates the hemispheres like in olden days. With no “eSST” or “QEV-2,” the percentage of flat-earthers will explode in correlation (and causation) with the inability (inaccessibility?) of common people to travel around the world.
All the same, Geales in London is no longer, so why even bother to cross the ocean?