Transport for London is installing digital screens in various places around the tube network to display ads, replacing the old system of sticking posters to the walls. The other day, I tweeted about an article that I think is both interesting and important in relation to this – do these digital screens have a smaller or larger carbon footprint than printed posters?
If you think about it, and as the article talks about, this is a fiendishly difficult question. If you really want to answer it, you’ll need to know the carbon cost of obtaining all the raw materials required to make all the components of the TV, what it costs to make the components, what it costs to ship the components to where they will be assembled, what the cost of assembly, testing and packaging is, what the cost of shipping the TV to the wholesaler is, what the cost of storing the TVs until they are sold is, the cost of shipping and installation of the TVs, and then, finally, the cost of running and maintaining them after they have been installed — and then you’ll need a similar calculation to figure out the carbon cost of posters.
For most people, including me, that seems like a question that you simply can’t answer. There’s just no way you could actually sit down and figure all these things out. Sure, I could probably figure out the carbon cost of the electricity to run the TVs vs. the carbon cost of some guys driving about with posters, but calculating the whole supply chain cost from beginning to end? It all seems too hard.
All of which is a very round-about way of saying that yesterday was my last day at Imagini, and that come Monday morning, I’ll be working for AMEE. I’m incredibly excited to be joining AMEE, because I believe that answering fiendishly difficult questions like the one above are vital, because everyone in the world should have a way of being able to calculate the total carbon footprint of everything.