3rd November 2006, 02:09 PM
Carbon footprint of an archaeological excavation. I have made a rough calculation based on a variety of âcarbon footprint calculatorsâ which are on the internet. However most of these are aimed at the home rather than business.
Anyway here are my figures. I have assumed an evaluation taking two weeks, including one week of machining with a JCB 3CX, at a distance 30 miles from base, requiring 5 people and therefore two cars to transport staff to and fro. Site huts are hooked up to a diesel generator. JCB consumes 320 litres of fuel, car travel and other uses add up to just under 206 litres. This equates to a total of 1,370kg of carbon emissions for petrol and diesel.
In the office this takes a week to do the post-excavation work, consuming 210kg of carbon on office light, heat and power. It would also use approximately 100kg of carbon in resources such as paper and other consumables.
So the grand total would be 1689kg, or 1.689 tonnes of CO2.
This does not include all the carbon used in manufacturing the vehicles, plant and machinery in the first place, or in making computers, printers, ink cartridges etc., nor in supplying films to and from processing, production of archive materials etc. etc. Nor does it look into the organic content of the spoil and some of the other factors mentioned by m300572. So this might be an under-estimate.
The average personal carbon footprint for an individual for a whole year is usually reckoned to be between 10 and 12 tonnes of CO2.
Anyway, some food for thought.
Anyway here are my figures. I have assumed an evaluation taking two weeks, including one week of machining with a JCB 3CX, at a distance 30 miles from base, requiring 5 people and therefore two cars to transport staff to and fro. Site huts are hooked up to a diesel generator. JCB consumes 320 litres of fuel, car travel and other uses add up to just under 206 litres. This equates to a total of 1,370kg of carbon emissions for petrol and diesel.
In the office this takes a week to do the post-excavation work, consuming 210kg of carbon on office light, heat and power. It would also use approximately 100kg of carbon in resources such as paper and other consumables.
So the grand total would be 1689kg, or 1.689 tonnes of CO2.
This does not include all the carbon used in manufacturing the vehicles, plant and machinery in the first place, or in making computers, printers, ink cartridges etc., nor in supplying films to and from processing, production of archive materials etc. etc. Nor does it look into the organic content of the spoil and some of the other factors mentioned by m300572. So this might be an under-estimate.
The average personal carbon footprint for an individual for a whole year is usually reckoned to be between 10 and 12 tonnes of CO2.
Anyway, some food for thought.