• Major new exhibition unveiled at the Eden Project
• The Art of Cutting Carbon featuring Our Carbon Creatures highlights the huge amounts of CO2 caused by the manufacture of everyday materials
• Exhibition features in a new BBC documentary The Art Of Cutting Carbon by the BBC’s Energy and Environment Analyst Roger Harrabin, available on BBC iPlayer now

A landmark new exhibition The Art of Cutting Carbon, curated by BBC Energy and Environment Analyst Roger Harrabin and artist Simon Bingle, has opened at the Eden Project in Cornwall, UK.

In a stunningly original way, a series of sculptures highlights the huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions caused by the manufacture of everyday materials – concrete, steel, plastic, paper/card and aluminium.

Each figure hints at the amount of CO₂ emitted on behalf of every one of us in the UK every year.

Bringing the exhibition to the best stage has been a labour of love lasting more than a decade for Roger Harrabin and creative director Simon Bingle after they were inspired by the groundbreaking work of Julian Allwood, Professor of Engineering and the Environment at Cambridge University.

Simon and three fellow artists, Kedisha Coakley, Gina Czarnecki, and John Jostins made sculptures from these materials for The Art of Cutting Carbon.

The exhibition and the research that led to it is the subject of a BBC documentary, The Art of Cutting Carbon available now on BBC iPlayer.

Roger Harrabin has reported on the environment for the BBC since the mid-1980s, telling stories about countless issues, from acid rain to “forever” chemicals in breast milk, from fracking to farm subsidies, and from air pollution to plastic waste.

He said: “Each year the overarching threat of climate change has preoccupied me more and more. But one climate story has been consistently hard to tell – that’s the story of the carbon emissions embodied, or embedded, in materials we use.

“We worry about carbon emissions from our cars, gas boilers and flights, but in truth we are surrounded by everyday materials that have also caused huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions.

“Around 2010 I had the idea of commissioning sculptures of the five most carbon-intensive materials – based on work by Professor Julian Allwood. So, I was delighted when the Eden Project’s visionary Co-founder Sir Tim Smit said ‘Welcome to Cornwall.’ I can think of no more fitting stage for the exhibition than at Eden.”

Simon Bingle said: “Art is a uniquely powerful tool for communicating ideas to wider audiences. We had already decided that the story of embodied carbon and its impact on all our lives needed to reach as wide an audience as possible.

“So, we created an open call for artists to respond to in 2018. We finally selected Kedisha Coakley, Gina Czarnecki, and John Jostins. They bring their individual aesthetic, imagination and creativity to draw audiences into thinking about the issue. Eighteen years after our first discussions about how to tell the carbon story through art, The Art of Cutting Carbon featuring Our Carbon Creatures has found its home at Eden.”

Sir Tim Smit said: “Culture is itself an ecological force. No one fact will change the way we treat the world – one great story just might.”