CO2 PACKS - £8 each
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You can buy these packs on the Living Streets website.
Engaging with the concepts of “amounts” of Carbon Dioxide is very difficult, so we have created a pack of 60 balloons that can be used to show children and their parents the impact of their journey to school in a very tangible way.
Did you know that one school run produces 60 balloons worth of carbon dioxide?
Environmental note:
While floating balloons look pretty, we suggest not filling the balloons with Helium. This is due to the world helium shortage, as well as the environmental impact of the small bits of burst balloons that have been released.
For an equally memorable event, we suggest you get the children to blow them up, and then release them without tying the ends. The resulting raspberry noise, and the mayhem caused by the balloons flying everywhere, will be just as memorable!
What is the calculation behind this amazing statistic?
The average journey to school is 1.5 miles or 2.41 km (Page 35 of National Travel Survey 2005).
This is multiplied by 2 (to school and back).
The average new car in 2006 produced 167.2g carbon dioxide (CO2) per KM (Friends of the Earth)
Multiply these together and the average school run (in just one car) produces 806g of CO2.
We then converted that mass into a volume by dividing it by the molar weight of CO2 (44g) and multiplying it by the volume of an ideal gas at standard temperature and pressure (22.414 litres). For more on the science of gases, search wikipedia, or start here
That gave a volume of 410.17 litres of CO2 produced by the school run.
A balloon blown up to 23cm across contains about 6.4 litres of gas. Divide the volume of gas produced by the school run, by the volume of the balloon and you get 64.3 balloons of CO2 emitted by the average school run.
