Think first before you plan a break. A two-week luxury holiday could require almost 400 trees to be planted to offset your carbon footprint. A couple of lattes a day would need 13 trees a year.
That’s according to a report by Credit Suisse Group AG, detailing lifestyle choices and the impact on greenhouse-gas emissions. According to Bloomberg, the study examined the number of trees needed to mitigate everyday consumer behavior and erase a person’s carbon footprint over the course of a year.
“It likely remains difficult for most consumers to grasp how bad an individual activity is from a climate impact point of view,” the analysts said. “We introduce the concept of Treeprint, or the number of mature trees that are needed to offset the emissions generated with a certain activity.”
Swapping steak frites for a vegetarian pasta bolognese for dinner would result in a 94% drop in emissions, while a white tea’s footprint is about 90% lower than a latte, the analysts including Eugene Klerk wrote in the report. An eight-minute shower each day needs up to 10 trees a year to get to net zero, they estimated.
