Quiz: How Bad Are Bananas?

Over the last 18 months, the OU Students Association has been working hard to embed sustainability into its work. We have worked with students and in partnership with The Open University, bringing our People & Planet League rating up 48 places to 67th. (The People & Planet League is a student-led audit of the sustainability practices of UK universities, using publicly-available information and data.

Part of this work has seen staff and students trained in ‘Carbon Literacy’ – that is understanding carbon footprint and the impact we have on the planet. This has been delivered through short courses, but also through engagement with the game ‘How Bad Are Bananas?’

How Bad Are Bananas? is an interactive game based on the book by the same name by Mike Berners-Lee. The aim is to get players to think about the climate impact of an activity or item by comparing two things by their calculated CO2e (CO2 equivalent).

“Oh, so this is a game for climate scientists” (I hear you say). Not at all! Someone much better at maths than me has simply found a way to combine the impact of all greenhouse emissions into one simple measure – its equivalent in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions – to save us having to try and compare our carbon dioxide (CO2) with methane, and methane (CH4) with nitrous oxide (N2O)!

We have converted the information into a special edition quiz below. All you must do is decide which of the two items in the question has the largest carbon footprint (and by that we mean the largest emissions by CO2e – so the methane produced by the burping/farting of cows absolutely counts. The hydrogen sulfide from volcanic emissions too. Think greenhouse emissions as a whole!).

Good luck!