Enemy of the planet: The ethics of consumption

Remember Just Say No? Three snappy words encapsulated the urgent advice to a whole generation at risk of being seduced by the tempting but dangerous pleasures of drugs.

Well, a new phrase very much along those lines is on the way, a phrase that similarly denotes a personal struggle, but which refers to new social concerns a million miles from drugs (though just as vital): Just Wear A Jumper.

What's that asking you to avoid? Simple. Heating the air outside your back door.

The green campaign against patio heaters is stepping up. Those devices like giant, fiery standard lamps that once you may have seen only outside the few British restaurants bold enough to put tables on the pavement, are spreading, into more and more catering outlets - and into the home. They're quickly joining garden furniture and the barbecue as middle-class outdoor essentials. Certainly, if, merely as a householder, you want to dine alfresco in the evening, in the miserably sodden summer of 2007, you may well find the idea attractive.

Yet they are anathema to environmentalists because of their profligate emissions of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas responsible for global warming. "It's difficult to conceive of an article that inflicts more gratuitous damage on the environment than a patio heater," says Tony Juniper, executive director of Friends of the Earth. "They just blaze energy out into the open air. Given what we know about climate change, they're just not justifiable."

This week the Government's domestic energy watchdog, the Energy Saving Trust (EST), let fly at patio heaters with both barrels. Based on regular polling of a group of more than 1,000 consumers, the EST estimated that ownership of domestic patio heaters is now 1.2 million, and set to almost double to 2.3 million in the near future. And, not mincing its words, it appealed to DIY stores, garden centres and other retail outlets to stop selling them.

"We are calling for responsible retailers to reconsider the sale of patio heaters in light of the substantial amount of carbon emissions they produce," said Philip Sellwood, the Chief Executive. "People are also influencing the larger more damaging commercial sector with a third of pubgoers choosing pubs where there is a patio heater. Landlords are helping to make patio heaters desirable - which they are not."

And then, in words which may long be remembered, he added: "Why don't people just wear a jumper?"

Why? Well, they have to be convinced they should. For these are the opening shots in a fascinating social struggle, over what is in effect an entirely new issue: low-carbon consumerism.

Many of us like to think of ourselves as educated consumers, and we often take a careful look at the labels on products before we buy them. How much salt does this contain? How many additives, E-numbers, artificial colouring or preservatives? But marketing specialists and environmentalists both are realising that consumers are starting to look out for another potentially dodgy ingredient: carbon.

What if the product's label also tells you how much carbon dioxide its manufacture, distribution, and/or use, entails? You can work this out with many things, even with a packet of crisps. What if a comparison of labels showed you that X Crisps were responsible for fewer emissions of CO2 than Y Crisps? Would it not affect your buying decision - and would not X Crisps get your vote?

A lot of people are starting to think this would be the case, and that we are witnessing the beginnings of a wholly new trend - to view carbon in the retail sector as a pariah material.

A key example frequently given is sales of 4x4 cars, which after rising for many years, are now falling. It is widely felt that the amount of fuel they use, and thus the amount of greenhouse gases they emit, are over the top and unnecessary, even to live a busy family life with children to be taken to school in busy cities. The 4x4 is becoming socially unacceptable because of its carbon cost.

Yet the patio heater is an even more extreme example of a carbon emitting device, and its sales appear to be soaring. What's going on?

Recent polls have shown us that although the general level of environmental concern is fairly high in Britain, people's willingness to do something about it, in their own lives - to make changes in their behaviour - is actually surprisingly low. It may be the case that a product needs to be effectively demonised in the public eye - as 4x4s have been - before people will actually turn away from it. The moment has not yet arrived when the glowing heater on your patio is a source of shame, the way a Sky TV satellite dish on the wall once was, years ago (remember that?).

The green groups, however, are striving manfully to bring that shaming moment about. This week's Energy Saving Trust report goes into detail about the carbon emissions you will be responsible for it you light up next to the geranium tubs.

The average one, it says, emits about 50kg of CO2 a year, and it estimates that 2.3 million patio heaters would emit the same amount of carbon annually as driving from Lands End to John O'Groats 200,000 times.

It also looks at the issue of patio heaters and pubs, which has exacerbated the problem. In fascinating research published earlier this year, British Gas found that the smoking ban in pubs in Scotland, adopted in March 2006, had led to an enormous increase in use of the heaters, as they were bought to warm outside areas where smokers were still permitted to puff. Half of all pubs in Scotland bought at least one patio heater after the ban, and many bought several. British Gas calculated that at least 40,000 new patio heaters would be bought by English pubs for the smoking ban south of the border, which came in on 1 July.

The Energy Saving Trust hits out at drinkers who encourage this trend, saying that a third of pub-goers - about eight million people - who like to sit outside look for a pub with a patio heater.

It ought to be said that the EST figures, which are extrapolated nationally from their 1,000-strong polling base, are challenged by Calor Gas, the market leader in supplying the propane and butane fuels that most patio heaters use. Based on actual sales, the company estimates that the number of heaters in use in Britain is not 1.3 million, but 600,000.

Andrew Ford of Calor Gas said that patio heaters were responsible for only 0.002 per cent of UK carbon emissions, and that the use of mobile-phone chargers alone was responsible for very much more.

He will have a hard time, however, convincing greens of the patio heaters' merits. For most environmentalists, they are the very devil. London's Mayor, Ken Livingstone, has turned his fire on them this year. "For the sake of the climate, I urge pub and café owners to kick the patio heater habit," he said. "We need to call a halt towards this trend for wasting energy in this way. I hope garden centres and other retail outlets will reconsider their promotion."

Some of them have. In a notable victory for the patio-antis, Wyevale, the garden centre company, stopped selling the heaters earlier this year following pressure from Friends of the Earth. But most of the major DIY chains and garden centres continue to carry them, and buyers continue to come through the doors.

In fact, this does seem to be a case where the green conscience of the nation is not quite adequate to make the change in behaviour that would see the patio heater go the way of the cigarette-smoke-filled pub. And some environmentalists would prefer Government action against the heaters.

"In politics there's this kind of feeling that some of the things we have to do to stop global warming are unpopular so they are difficult for politicians to carry out," said Tony Juniper. "But if they can invade Iraq in the face of the opposition there was to that, surely they can ban patio heaters. It would be a very good symbolic ban. By bringing it in you would give the signal that society has now reached the point where it's socially unacceptable to waste energy so profligately. Governments need to get their acts together. They need to start putting in place measures, not only for new technologies that are necessary to combat global warming, but also for the changes that are necessary in our personal behaviour.

"You can walk into a DIY store and see them on sale everywhere, they're still being promoted as if there's absolutely nothing wrong with them, yet it's difficult to understand why they're even allowed on the market."

So when you're planning that patio dinner party next week, the summer dinner, the one with the lamb and the rosé and the summer pudding to follow, and you look at the weather forecast and it says that even though it's virtually August it's going to be chilly with scattered showers, and you walk past your garden centre and there is that great thing like a giant candle waiting to shed its warmth all over your guests, think of the planet, and remember again those words, so suitable, really for an English summer: Just Wear A Jumper.

What is it about heaters?

* Ownership of domestic patio heaters is to double from 1.2 million now to 2.3 million in a year, according to the Green Barometer, produced by the Energy Saving Trust.

* Two-thirds of owners use their patio heaters once or twice a week.

* Half of owners use them during the hottest months of the year.

* The EST says that the average patio heater uses the same amount of energy as a gas hob in a kitchen uses in six months.

* While a hob is used every day in most kitchens the report reveals that patio heaters are typically only used mostly in July and August.

* The average patio heater emits about 50kg of CO2 per year.

* 2.3 million domestic patio heaters would emit the same amount of CO2 in a year as driving from Lands End to John O'Groats 200,000 times.

* Northern Ireland has the most householders who own or are planning to buy a patio heater with 14 per cent compared with England, 10 per cent, Wales 8 per cent and Scotland 7 per cent.

* Yorkshire & Humberside has the most householders who own or are planning to buy a patio heater, 18 per cent, compared with the East of England, 3 per cent.

* A third of pub goers in England look for a pub with a patio heater, the highest in the UK, compared to Northern Ireland, 25 per cent, Wales, 24 per cent, and Scotland 17 per cent. Nearly half of pub goers in the North-east look for a pub with a patio heater.

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