Alright, I know, I’ve gotten a little heavy with my last few WildernessPunk articles. The Last War, I mean, ouch. So instead of dragging some new atrocity into the light, I’m taking a more positive proactive view of our modern cultures and the pastimes many of us enjoy. Most likely we all don’t occupy ourselves with the same activities. Some people do a wide variety of things while others possess a narrower focus.
I would also mention some activities bleed together and many involve actions which could cause an increased pollution trail; such as playing softball, but then BBQ after the game, or grabbing a hotdog at a concert. Also, things like ‘taking a vacation’ are too vague and possess too much variety to address as a topic. I’m not going to dive into these side pocket issues but instead shine my spotlight on…
Common Leisure Activities and their Environmental Impacts:
If I didn’t mention your leisure activity please forgive, but with the data I’m about to outline below, I’m sure you could figure it out if you were so inclined.
As Blackrain79 says, “Let’s jump right in.”
Music Concerts
Like many things on this list, this activity usually involves some level of transportation to accomplish. Let’s say 10 miles with a medium car creates 7 pounds of carbon. Of course, the bands will need some juice to play these days and the concert hall has lights and plumbing, but if everyone is turning off their lights and lowering their environmental controls before they go to a concert, this could be a win for the environment. Enough people must go and be there for long enough for the energy they aren’t using at home to counter act the individual transportation cost and the carbon print of running the show.
Let’s assume you bring a date, drive a round trip of ten miles, and stay there for 4 hours. 3.5 pounds for driving – Your normal 2 pounds an hour x 4 (8) = in the positive 4.5 pounds let’s minus .5 pounds for some power running in your absence, and also to keep my head from spinning, so you are currently up 4 pounds of good karma. Assuming they have a small kitchen they are creating about 800 pounds of pollution while you are there.
Conclusion:
If you drive 10 miles, going to a concert is environmentally friendly as long as more than 200 people attend the concert. If you don’t drive this would be about cut in half so only 100 people would have to be there. If there is no restaurant on the premises, you could probably tack another 50% off the number of people needed.
Reading
Like everything else this could have a wide spread. If you buy a few used books at once and then share them, you are probably knocking it out of the park, while ordering the new 50 Shades of Whey in a huge box from Amazon makes you an environmental criminal. Also, are you burning a light while you read or plugging in a device to do so?
The Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden determined it takes reading 11880 pages on an ebook to counteract the environmental cost of making it compared to buying normal books. But keep in mind this is just for its construction, not its use.
The average reading device creates 7.5 pounds an hour.
The average book creates 7 pounds of pollution to build. (I’m going on the high end here, but some agencies put it as low as 1.3 pounds and several companies have moved to using mostly recycled products)
If it takes you 10 minutes to read 6 pages this means 36 pages an hour, so if the average book contains 360 pages, reading a book on a cell phone or a device creates about 75 pounds of pollution. So reading a page book is more than 10 times better for the environment than reading an ebook on your phone and this is only after you read 33 360 page books to counterbalance the environmental construction cost to make an ereader. (We’ll get to cell phones later and you won’t be happy)
For the last decade I’ve been hearing ebooks were better for the environment. I guess that myth was a few thousand percent wrong. Putting it another way books beat reading on your device or cell after the first hour of reading.
Shipping a book to your house. I had a hard time finding this amount online, so I’ll just drop this fact here. In 2020 Amazon created over 113 billion pounds of pollution transporting goods to people’s houses. 113,740,000,000 pounds.
Printed books could help damage biodiversity, however once the price is paid, we can get 10 hours of enjoyment. Compare this to 10 hours of watching television (.2 pounds an hour) and if you’re watching television by yourself you get 2 pounds of pollution. Yet nothing is easy. More than one person could be watching the television at the same time. But you could also resell the book or hand it down to someone. The same book could be read dozens of times and of course you could be buying it used.
Conclusion:
Forget about your ebook reader or doing anything extra on your cell. Try your absolute best to never order anything which needs to be shipped to you. However, if you buy 50% of your books used and try to have some of your books read more than once, your reading hobby is probably slightly more efficient than watching television.
Television
I saw several different stats presented online. Some were as low as .009 an hour and other rose much higher but I’m going to go with a television creating .2 pounds of carbon an hour. Of course, there was the basic construction of the television, but for most families this is watered down quickly by the sheer numbers of hours the TV is used. Also, in theory, the trail per hour could be divided by the number of people watching.
Conclusion:
When I was a child, watching the television all day was considered one the worst things you could let your kids do. This could still be the case in some respects but as far as having an impact on the environment television, compared to many activities is a big win for the environment.
Surfing the Web/Social Media
This obviously covers all computer use so it doesn’t matter if you are surfing the web or writing an article like this. Also, many people use social media and play games on their cells and not computers, but don’t worry, we’ll get to them later.
Using a computer creates about .4 pounds of pollution an hour or about double that of a television or one 18th as much as a cell phone. This number compared to an hour of driving (42 pounds) is barely noticeable. (Note that if you are streaming on your laptop or playing online video games this amount roughly doubles)
Conclusion:
While not a harmless as reading a recycled novel, or even watching television, computer use is pretty low on the environmental impact scale.
Role Playing Game
Alright, on to my favorite. Again, we need a half dozen books to get started, but keep in mind I used a book last weekend which I purchased in 1979 and have used every year since. At 7 pounds a pop, the 6 new books I bought for Dungeons and Dragons 5e had less of an impact than an hour of cell phone use and I’ll be using them for decades. I buy figures which are now made of plastic and paint them, so materials are being created and transported to my town for me to buy. Then again, I’m using as much plastic as the container of orange juice I hope might get recycled and these figures will last long enough for my grandkids to use.
There are common things like, yes we’ll have lights on and maybe heat controls going, but if I was home they’d be going anyway and, like a concert, if 5 people are using less at their homes because they are at my house, I’m going to allow this to cancel out my use of power for the event itself, if anything I’m saving on general electricity use by gathering people together.
Conclusion:
After some initial cost, which is quickly watered down over the decades and five households using the power of one, it is quite possible Role-Playing Games might be one of the few activities on this list which helps the environment, although in the end this will be balanced by how far the players drive to your event and if any of them carpool etc. (FYI I have carpooled to gaming sessions a lot lately, but from 2017-2021 I exclusively rode my bike to games held at one of my Game Master’s homes.)
3 players 30 miles of driving = 21 pounds of pollution. Maybe minus 1 for more people sharing the climate control and you do have a heavy price tag of 20 pounds per session which isn’t good. However, if you can assume adults would have probably driven the same amount on a Saturday anyway and are heading to my place instead, I think we can still consider RPG as an activity which can potentially lower the carbon cost for a small group.
Hiking
Hiking itself does little to hurt the world, but many nature lovers forget their enjoyment of nature can be a selfish act. With so many of us living in cities how far do you have to drive to get to a decent hike? I’ve heard many people bragging about how far they traveled to prove how much they groove on nature, but if you drive 80 miles on a Sunday to hike a remote trail, are you a nature lover or a nature destroyer? Would you be kinder to our world if you didn’t put your pleasures first?
Conclusion:
With driving creating .7 pounds of carbon per mile this can be a sticky issue. Perhaps multi-tasking like shopping on the way home or collecting wood for your fireplace during the hike can curb this waste some. If you really like to hike, it might be proper to pay for your hike by doing things such as not eating meat for a week after your hike or only watering your garden with gray water for seven days.
Camping
Similar to hiking, much of the real cost here is driving to the site. While camping we might eat more, consume more meat than usual, and pound a few extra brews, but it isn’t like we wouldn’t be eating at home. We could also be saving on our cooking carbon cost by using coals from a fire which we would have burned anyway. We’ve already determined driving creates .7 pounds of pollution per mile. However, if I’m lowering climate controls, using televisions, computers, water, and electricity while I’m camping (55 pounds a day, let’s suppose you bring this down to just 15 while you aren’t at home), this all but cancels out the carbon footprint of my drive if I only travel 115 miles per 3 days of camping.
Conclusion:
While not perfect, camping can be a lower impact activity. If a person is hunting or collecting firewood during the trip this could be lower still.
Hitting a Tavern
At the risk of sounding repetitive it is all about the driving here. If you turn off your lights and lower your climate controls, you are actually helping the environment as long as you walk or ride your bike to the place. The tavern will be using lights and climate controls, but they would have them on if you weren’t there anyway. (For similar data see Music Concerts)
Also note buying beer on tap is much better than buying bottles. Also drinking at a local brewery is much better than drinking beers shipped across the country. At home if you only buy cans and recycle them you are lowering the environmental cost by 20%.
The closer the better, and if you decide not to drink and drive this is actually a plus for environment. Sure, the beer has a carbon footprint while being created and transported, but if you were going to have a few beers at home anyway…
Gardening
This seems like an environmentalist’s slam dunk. You are getting exercise, recycling seeds, and food waste, and creating food with a much smaller carbon footprint. Still seeds are produced, processed, and shipped. Are you using fertilizer? Did you transport mulch over distances?
Conclusion:
We might not be getting off without a hitch, but if you compost and use seeds found in your food, recycle your grey water, and reuse seeds from your own garden, this might be one of the few hobbies, if done right, which could lower your footprint instead of increasing it.
Restaurants
So obviously much of the carbon footprint will be similar to the same meal at home. If you eat a cheeseburger your pollution trail is huge whether you eat at home or out. Like other hobbies mentioned above, in theory, if everyone lowered their climate controls before they all went to the same place it could take some of the edge of the pollution price, but did you drive there for just one meal? Obviously if I make say 60 meals per trip to the grocery store, my gas price is divided by 60. If I take the same 4 people out to eat that would take care of 4 meals and, let’s be generous, and say I get 2 more from leftovers. So just in terms of gas use, eating out wastes 10 times as much gas as making your own meals. Same thing, more or less, if you have food delivered to your door.
The average restaurant creates 1,300,000 pounds of greenhouse gases and pollution a year. This equals 3616 a day. Say the place is open 12 hours a day and your dinner lasts 2 hours. This would mean they are creating roughly 300 pounds of pollution while you are there. (Some of this includes the whole back story of the food’s production and transport so it not entirely occurring there within those two hours) Assuming a typical American has an active 12-hour day, this would mean if you were home, on average you would be creating roughly 2 pounds of greenhouse gases an hour (This would mean 4 pounds for your 2 hour stay). Although to be honest every time we prepare and consume food our output spikes considerably but let’s just be nice and said you turned down your air conditioning, cut all your lights, walked to the establishment, and this made your use even out to average. So if over 75 people are eating in the restaurant at once you could in theory be consuming less. If 150 were present you’d be cutting you footprint in half, but if only 25 people are there you are part of an increase in your own imprint per hour by 3 fold. (12 for 2 hours instead of 4)
Conclusion:
If you can walk to a place and turn everything off before you leave, eating out might be a wash, or even an upswing, but if you add 3.5 pounds per person to drive two people ten miles there would have to be over 200 people eating there for you to break even. If only a 100 people were eating there you are creating a footprint about twice your average.
Video Games
As stated above running a television for an hour creates much less use than a cell phone (See Above). Therefore, if you are playing the games on your television your energy use is low. However, if you’re streaming it doubles the use. Either way you are still using about one 60th the power playing them on your cell phone requires.
There is also the cost of constructing the game controls and individual games, although they might give you more hours of pleasure than some products we purchase so that lowers their overall pollution cost. However, lights and climate controls are also involved with most indoor activities.
Conclusion:
Playing video games is just a few levels worse for the environment than watching television unless you are playing them on your cell in which case you might as well fire up your diesel truck for an hour and cook lamb on the engine.
Sports
This depends a lot on the sport. If you are walking to the corner to play a round of hoops with a ten-year-old ball, you are barely creating a ripple. However, if your hockey goalie needs pads to be shipped here from China, it is going to be a big environmental ouch. If I must drive my kid 30 extra miles a week to make it to soccer games, this isn’t going to help matters either. And obviously, all golf courses should be destroyed, or at a bare minimum only be watered with recycled sewage waste.
Conclusion:
A bigger swing in possibilities with this one, so hard to nail it down precisely, but obviously if you are using items for long lengths of time and not driving to make it happen, your trail is minimal, but you can also jack up your footprint if you toss out your ideals to insure you and yours can do whatever they wish regardless of price.
Cell Use
This might surprise some but running your cell phone for an hour creates 7.5 pounds of population, roughly equal to driving your car a mile. As stated above this is roughly 18 times the use of a laptop.
Conclusion:
Save your cell for texting. Try use it as little as possible and unless it is an emergency or you hate nature, never stream data or play video games with it.
Giant Concerts/Events
Much of the environmental costs of these things is the trash remaining behind and the trampled land. Have you ever seen the forest after a rainbow gathering? It will probably take it 10 years to recover. Of course, many events take place in areas where all life has already been removed. Usually, these events involve a lot of driving, sometimes hundreds of miles, so that’s a big loss. Food and other supplies are transported out to these events for your needs. The carbon footprints for these events are colossal but are also divided by the number of participants. Carpooling and other tricks could help lower this cost further, but if you’re driving a few hundred miles it’s hard to think of this as anything other than a big environmental fail.
Eating the transported food can be considered a huge additional loss, but if you’re lowering your energy use at home while you are gone, we’ll just give you half credit the campers get. However, keep in mind that if you bring your own supplies you are closer to camping stats other than the colossal mess let behind.
Conclusion:
Like camping we can just bottom line it with the driving involved. Since the concert goer is only getting half the credit of camping due to consuming transported goods, which include the bands themselves, one household can only drive about 60 miles before starting to accumulate a carbon debt. If you are driving 600 miles, which is probably less than most people are doing, you are creating 400 pounds of pollution. Of course, carpooling multiple households which are reducing their homes climate controls and energy use could cut this in half or by a third.
Many people enjoy large events, but I hope they don’t ever call themselves environmentalists.
Going to the Movies
Like other hobbies mentioned above if you lower your output at home and a large number of people share the luxury of the theater, this is probably not the worst thing you can be doing as long as you aren’t driving too far. When I was a kid, we had to drive 30 miles to a movie so that would be a huge dig. With it only being four miles from my home currently, a monthly trip to the movies isn’t too bad.
Conclusion:
One of the stronger choices on this list as long as you don’t overdo it.
Poker/Cards/Board Games
These requires a certain number of resources to construct, and sometimes ship from China, but as long as they are used for years or even decades, a night sitting around a table rolling monopoly dice does little harm. Card games would be even better for the environment.
Conclusion:
As long as the games are chosen wisely and used often this is probably a big win because modern families could certainly be doing other activities instead which would create much larger footprints.
Coffee Shops
Like other things mentioned, as long as you lower yours and share a place’s climate control with others, you start with a potential upswing. At the risk of sounding repetitive, how far you drive plays a huge factor in whether you might be saving a few Watts versus creating 15 pounds of filth. However, with each cup of coffee creating, on average, half a pound of pollution the more you drink once there, the larger your footprint would be.
Conclusion:
If you can walk there, you might have a reasonable chance to not be an environmental villain if you only have a cup, but if you drive 10 miles and drink 2 cups you just added 8.5 pounds of pollution to the environment.
Creating Art
This is another one which includes a wide spread of activities. If you are a kid drawing in an old notebook with a nicked pen, I wouldn’t worry too much. Certain paints and supplies have heavy environmental tolls, and these products should be researched before purchase. Also, if you ordering items built in China, this is a giant kick. Many artists dumpster dive their supplies and recycle objects around their home to help with their creating. Such things certainly lower your work’s impact.
Conclusion:
Much like sports, with proper choices this can be a great activity and often makes the world a more enjoyable place. However, one should remember to curb selfish choices if you wish to help this planet.
The Real Conclusion:
This ended up being a long list, but I hope you found it useful to discover all this information in one place and this has also made you reevaluate some of the other activities you enjoy and gave you the knowledge to decide what’s best moving forward.
In the end I’m not telling you what choice to make, I’m just reminding you that every choice you make is an environmental choice.
Author’s note:
Some hobbies are just so painfully obvious, regarding hurting the environment I didn’t bother to mention them. If you are into destroying the forest and deserts by four wheeling and pumping chemicals into the water with jet skis, you are on your own and probably didn’t dare to read this article anyway.
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