To Hell in a Handbag ©2005

To Hell in a Handbag is a collaborative attempt to reconstruct a handbag and its contents in terms of the 'hellishness' of the carbon dioxide emissions created in their manufacture and delivery, as a contribution to global warming/climate change. A handbag was filled with familiar items, including car keys, money, receipts for a television and espresso coffee, a holiday booking to Phuket, a mobile phone, wallet and money.

The Collaboration began with Karey Shinn as the lead, Nick Shinn as graphic designer, and Peter Metcalfe from the University of East Anglia, along with Asher Minns, Communications Manager of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, for technical support. The search for data expanded to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, East Anglia Food Link, Essex University Dept. of Biological Sciences, The Royal Mint, the UK Vehicle Certification Agency, Bristol, and it's still expanding - because, quite shockingly, no one has the whole carbon dioxide picture for even the simplest things.

Conclusion: Collaboration could be a cultural engine to drive carbon dioxide reduction, by operating between media, academia, industry and art.

Leading climate change models represent back-end thinking, relying on scenarios extrapolated from the existing carbon fuel based economy, with unknown marginal improvements expected from changes in population, technological development, and energy efficiency. These models underestimate the worse case scenarios.

On the other hand, what is being ignored is change at the front end of the economic force, a product design revolution that could harness the ingenuity and purchasing power of the 11 billion people that scientific models predict by 2100.

To Hell in a Handbag went nowhere fast.