Day Four: To BBQ, or not to BBQ?

What a glorious day! Temperatures have hit 25 degrees in my little corner of the planet, and all of a sudden it feels like summer. It's hot, muggy and there's that feeling in the air that barbeque's will be happening up and down the country this weekend - just remember you carbon footprint when you're stoking up those coals. It struck me that I actually did not know which fuel was best to use on my barbeque, up until now I have always used charcoal (mostly through the lack of a gas powered unit), but what is actually environmentally better?

A little digging later and I found out that research has shown that gas barbeque's are the most C02 efficient, churning out approximately 2.5kg of C02 per hour, with charcoal coming in at around 5kg. This is, of course, based on the use of a certain type of charcoal - a mix of things like sawdust, corn starch, lighter fluid and borax(!?) - the kind you get in those ready to light bags at the petrol station, and more commonly known as 'briquettes'. Real charcoal, or 'lump wood' charcoal, is made directly from hard wood and can produce significantly lower emissions, but still does not reach the lows of natural gas. The problem here is that this 'real' charcoal isn't always readily available and, if it has to be transported for thousands of miles to get to your back garden, there's the danger it's lower emissions are negated by the carbon it takes to transport it. All very complex, as per usual. Gas, of course, does have the drawback of it's origins - it's a fossil fuel and, as such, is non-renewable; whereas charcoal is renewable.

So what do you do? Have nothing but salad? Massage your statistics to offset the C02 emissions against something else that you haven't done: I didn't drive my car to buy the coal, therefore that negates the emissions of me burning it. The truth is, in this situation, it's a little bit 'you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't' - helpful, I know. There is, however, progress being made in sourcing and producing an environmentally sound charcoal to use on your barbeque. Amidst some Googling, I discovered a wonderful French company called 'Green Hearts', they produce 100% certified carbon neutral charcoal briquettes. Very simply put: they plant enough trees to replace those they turn into charcoal - take a look at Gilles Provenzano (one of the company's founders) talking about the product below. Also, not that this adds any eco-credentials to the product but I thought it worth mentioning - they're heart shaped so, you know, you feel like you're doing something good!

The product is currently not available in the UK (sigh), but there are alternative eco-friendly products you can buy from places like Nigel's Eco Store that may not claim to be 100% carbon neutral, but they're one step closer, and a damn sight better than what you'd find at Tesco's petrol station. So fret no more - that barbeque you were planning can still go ahead.

- James

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