From Eric Kvaalen, Les Essarts-le-Roi, France
On the subject of ensuring the carbon in goods doesn’t come from fossil fuels, what matters is the fate of the goods after use, not where their carbon came from. If you use something made from recycled plastic but then discard it and it turns into methane, you have added to global warming. If it is made from petroleum and afterwards remains intact forever, then you haven’t. And if products made from non-fossil carbon cost more (as they do), it is usually a sign that more resources and energy were used to produce them (4 January, p 22).
