Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Calculate Carbon Emissions of Your Sandwich (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: It's a staple of the British diet and a popular choice for a quick and easy lunch. But new research reveals the carbon footprint of the humble sandwich could be fuelling harmful greenhouse emissions. The worst offender is revealed as the ready-made "all-day breakfast" sandwich, crammed with egg, bacon and sausage. Researchers at the University of Manchester carried out the first ever study of the carbon footprint of sandwiches -- both home-made and ready-made. They considered the entire life cycle of sandwiches, including the production of ingredients, packaging, refrigeration and food waste. The team scrutinised 40 different sandwich types, recipes and combinations and found the highest carbon footprints for the sandwiches containing pork meat (bacon, ham or sausages) and also those filled with cheese or prawns. The researchers estimate that a ready-made (and highly calorific) all-day breakfast sandwich generates 1441g of carbon dioxide equivalent -- equal to the emissions created by driving a car for 12 miles (19km).
Oh good heavens. You people are insane.
The big problem with sandwiches is meat.
Try instead peanut butter, sprouts, toufu, etc. It's better for the animals and the environment and your health.
This should be titled from the "We-Are-Voluntarily-Giving-Up-Our-Credibility" department.
Living things on this planet breathe. They exhale. Sometimes we humans kill and eat them.
If all those animals were left alive, breathing out CO2, farting methane, eating up all the good grass and taking the jobs of other animals whose consumption have fallen out of popularity, their carbon footprint would be even worse.
Save the environment - stop eating plants that absorb CO2 and eat more meat.
What the carbon emissions of these bullshit "scientific" studies are?
Perhaps we should collect all these "scientists", melt them down and use their juices as a low cost biofuel. At least then they will be contributing.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
The carbon footprint per calorie needs to be calculated, so one can determine how best to fill oneself up while minimizing carbon footprint. I imagine 'eat food that would otherwise be discarded' would be at the top of the efficiency list, above food choice. What I REALLY wonder is why more research isn't being done into finding a way to control livestock micribiota, to eliminate their methane emissions. The research would also be useful for treating a wide variety of human gastrointestinal disorders and diseases (lactose intolerance and C. Difficile infection come to mind.)
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
12 miles is about the round-trip distance to a place I like getting breakfast, so I can fuck the environment on both fronts.
The University of Manchester is a prestigious organisation but I really would prefer them to spend their time doing something useful.
The carbon foot print of the Military Industrial Complex. Odds are, they're the BIGGEST contributor to climate change. So you get them to slim down, god knows they need to go on a diet, you can keep your egg, bacon and sausage sandwich.
Humans must be destroyed in order to save humanity. New at 11.
Well, you can't eat sunbeams, so maybe a better solution would be to find some more sustainable sources of feed for the livestock.
Wrapping it in plastic? Aluminum foil?
Seriously, the Carbon impact of my sandwich?
Let's just be honest, simply LIVING emits carbon, so are they not really saying people will have to die? They want us to go back to the amount of carbon we emitted in the 1700's, which is going to pretty much require that a large percentage of us die to save the planet.
Well the problem is that I'm not willing to do that and THEY are apparently not wiling to do so either, so counting the CO2 emissions of a sandwich is pretty much meaningless.
So I ask the obvious question... Are YOU serious about this? Yes? Then prove it...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Carbon footprint of 1000 private jets...
More than 1,000 aircraft have landed at a quartet of regional airports near Davos... the attendees will be addressing the major threat of climate change....
8-)
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
>> It's better for the animals...
An interesting thing I learned about this was some years back when I acquired a chicken plucking outfit and went into business. They guy I bought it from had retired, and there wasn't anyone in this half of the state that offered the service. I didn't even need to advertise. The local feed store manager did all that for me. He said his sales of chicks had taken a nose dive since the previous owner had quit, and over the next three years he sold thousands of chicks that he attributed directly to me and my outfit.
Consider my neighbor, the rancher. It's his job to make sure as many calves as possible get born. Except for the few that die on him, ALL of them are destined to be eaten.
There are an awful lot of animals in this world that would never be born in the first place if we didn't eat them.
Actually it is from the:
Lets-Honestly-Assess-How-Badly-The-Modern-Economy-Is-Making-The-Planet-Unlivable-For-Man Department.
Someone probably got paid for this critical scientific research. The article is only available for purchase.
The upside is that since I only had half a sandwich, I'm probably entitled to some carbon credits.
Sandwiches are bad for the environment. Thank the baby jebus I prefer Tacos!
Man, you really need that seminar!
So... calculation with these values, I would have to eat an All-Day breakfast sandwich every day for the next 17 years to equal the difference in carbon footprint between my car and one that is more environmentally friendly. So if I keep my car and just don't eat the sandwich, I can achieve balance at a fraction of the cost and even cut some calories in the process. Thanks Slashdot!
Guess we'd better stop eating sandwiches.
I guarantee you will quickly lower your carbon footprint if you stop eating.
I don't recommend it however.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
There are an awful lot of animals in this world that would never be born in the first place if we didn't eat them.
Indeed. Many millions a year. Maybe billions of animals that owe their existence due to humans. Wouldn't want to be in their shoes, but the global cow, chicken, pig, etc... populations would be far lower if people didn't exist.
Again, not saying life is all rosy for a farm animal, but farmed animals in general have a healthier, less stressful life than their wild counterparts. Life sucks for battery hens and the like though.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The study also recommends reducing or omitting certain ingredients that have a higher carbon footprint, like lettuce, tomato, cheese and meat.
If I can't eat those ingredients in a sandwich then I'm just having two slices of bread.
What do these sandal and socks wearing hippies eat? No lettuce, tomatoes, cheese or meat? Does this include other vegetables? Or, other dairy products? I also wonder if this study included only cold sandwiches or warm ones, like a hamburger.
One last question, if I need to calculate my carbon footprint before I even eat then I'm not thinking of anything else, so do these people that think this hard of their carbon footprint actually do anything productive?
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
"How to feel bad about EVERYTHING!"
It will cleanse the world of everyone who doesn't worship The Lulz.
Living things on this planet breathe. They exhale. Sometimes we humans kill and eat them.
If all those animals were left alive, breathing out CO2, farting methane, eating up all the good grass and taking the jobs of other animals whose consumption have fallen out of popularity, their carbon footprint would be even worse.
This xkcd is relevant.
The actual animals that normally live around on the planet are actually an insignificant small speck, compared to the impact... ...of all the specially human-created species that we raise on purpose to feed ourselves.
These are not animal that normal roam this planet.
This are animal specially raised by the human agriculture for the the specific purpose of answering the demand.
There is currently that much CO2, that much methane farting, and that much depletion of normal flora for the sole purpose of providing grazing, because we need to answer the meet eating habits (mostly of the developed world).
We want (as a specie) to eat meat, that's why we raise an insane amount of cattle.
Save the environment - stop eating plants that absorb CO2 and eat more meat.
If we actually massively stopped eating meat (e.g.: if the developed world slowed down on meat and started eating food containing a higher mix of vegetable like the rest of the world), we would actually be needing to raise *a lot less* animals, and thus a lot less impact on the environment.
Your whole argument sounds like : "Stop using trains, there are cars out there anyway". Huh no. We build cars to fulfill the needs of those who want cars and refuse to take public transportation. And the same we raise animal on insane scale just to fulfill the needs of those who insist on eating animal.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Guess we'd better stop eating.
FTFY, the climate crazies will be happy now.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
If you wanted to honestly assess how modern economics harm the planet, you'd get a lot farther researching the power usage required to keep cryptocurrency running than bitching about people's lunches.
Trying to make people feel guilty for eating isn't so much honest as childish.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
By 2100, and with 2 meters of global sea rise, and 3 degrees of Celcius increase in temps, one third of Florida will be underwater.
And by 2050, with 8 meters of sea level rise, and 18 degrees C increase in temps, we're all dead. You see, I can predict catastrophe, too, and my predictions are even catastrophier than yours.
You said "tell that to the people of Florida". If one third of the people of Florida are underwater in 2100, then they were the morons who didn't know how to move away from the approaching coast and I say good riddance. Darwin Awards to every damn one of them. 2100 is 82 years from now, and 99% of the people living in Florida today will be dead. Anyone who lives there in 2100 will have CHOSEN to live in a place where they know the sea will come wash them away after they drown. They CHOSE to stay.
By the way, "global sea level rise" is irrelevant when it comes to talking about coastal inundation. It is the local sea level that matters when talking about local effects. For example, while some parts of the planet are possibly seeing serious issues from rising sea levels, Oregon is not. It just happens that the sea level rise from higher water is being offset by coastal rise as the subduction zone pushes the land up. The "sea level rise" that will most impact the Oregon coast is when the cascadia subduction zone earthquake happens, the crustal deformation reduces, and the coast drops a couple of meters or more as a result. But the coast is toast by that time anyway.
Did you build the device you posted that from? No? It came from one of those container ships, you say? Well, then you first.
Your sandwich isn't a problem, unless you import the ingredients by private helicopter from your favourite sandwich place in Zurich.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
If everyone does their part the problem of climate change will be gone in about a month! Give or take a few days.
From the article:
"The study also recommends reducing or omitting certain ingredients that have a higher carbon footprint, like lettuce, tomato, cheese and meat. Reducing ingredients such as cheese and meat would also reduce the amount of calories eaten, contributing towards healthier lifestyles."
They have a funny definition of a sandwich if omitting lettuce, tomato, cheese and meat, seems like a reasonable recommendation for a sandwich .
Also, caloric fundamentalism is out of style. Did they not get the memo? Bread is "bad for you", yet that seems to be the only thing the environmentalist "scientists" want to allow us to eat. Perhaps the true agenda is to cause widespread human extinction due to obesity caused by bread-only diets. This would certainly reduce the impact of humans on the environment.
Even further, lets say lab grown beef becomes economically viable to replace 'real' beef. Would it be ethical to allow the extinction of the cow because it had become economically unsustainable? It cannot survive without humans because we artificially selected traits to service our needs over its own over thousands of years.
Life may suck for a cow but at least it has a life. Is a bad life better than no life?
I wonder if the carbon footprint just happen to fairly well correlate with the price. i.e. might I find that a $5 sandwich was responsible for roughly twice as much CO2 in the atmosphere as a $2.50 one?
Cases where it doesn't correlate, might have some interesting things going on.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I wonder how this result stacks up against the greenhouse gas emissions attributable to studies of greenhouse gas emissions.
The problem with this sort of thing is they typically make erroneous assumptions that people do the worst choices such as buying grain fed confinement pork. If you change that to pasture raised pork that isn't fed commercial feeds, e.g., grains, and is slaughtered and butchered on-farm then all of a sudden the pork goes from having a carbon footprint to actually sequestering carbon. But, that doesn't make as big a splash in the media so they don't make good choices.
Except far more people would be upset if you took away their meat sandwiches, than would be upset if you turned off cryptocurrencies.
That's an important thing to realise. I suspect that in total, meat sandwiches are also contributing more CO2 than cryptocurrencies.
Equals 3.68 * 10^15 grams of CO2 emitted if every single human being eats one sandwich a day:
Total content of CO2 in atmosphere is 8.52^10^17 grams which corresponds to 400 parts per million
That means that every year humanity adds 1 part per million to the CO2 concentration by merely eating a sandwich.
For comparison current rate of growth of CO2 concentration is 2 parts per million.
Let's stop eating sandwiches and we can reduce CO2 concentration twice /sarcasm
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Scientists today announced findings of decades-long research: The Human Race is unsustainable, and urged world leaders to draft agreements to phase out human life as soon as possible. In related news, PETA and Vegans are delighted with the news and fully endorse the validity of the study.
The article doesn't make mention of whether or not those numbers are really per-sandwich, or if they take say 2 slices of bread and count the carbon for the whole loaf in the same way that the RIAA lawsuits like to assume each pirated song from an album justifies the full cost of the album so that 12 songs = $300 rather than $25 or whatever..
Let's get all the frothing at the mouth, give up civilization Mother Earth types. Strip them of all technology created after 900 BC. Make them live in Antartica. Then, the rest of us can get on with our lives. Oh, and "scientists" who do these kind of studies can join them.
It is likely that the genetic diversity of cows would drop if we no longer had to farm them, eg specific breeds would likely no longer be farmed and therefore cease to exist.
By 2100, and with 2 meters of global sea rise, and 3 degrees of Celcius increase in temps, one third of Florida will be underwater.
I figure that'll put my place in Florida within sight of the beach by then.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Its informative to see the full CO2 footprint of foods, because some foods have a very large environmental cost and its not always apparent which ones are the worst offenders. For example, if you bike to work because you care about your CO2 footprint, from this study it looks like you could almost lower it by riding in a car instead if those extra calories come from high impact foods. Or, perhaps lower it quite a bit by giving up some stuff you don't even care about that much but the impact to the environment is large.
ready-made "all-day breakfast" sandwich, crammed with egg, bacon and sausage.
Otherwise commonly known as not a fucking sandwich. Which leads to this interesting conclusion: Ready made calorie bomb made with ingredients from an entire meal and is definitely not a sandwich has higher carbon emissions than a sandwich.
We are so clever! Science!
Even further, lets say lab grown beef becomes economically viable to replace 'real' beef. Would it be ethical to allow the extinction of the cow because it had become economically unsustainable? It cannot survive without humans because we artificially selected traits to service our needs over its own over thousands of years.
Life may suck for a cow but at least it has a life. Is a bad life better than no life?
You know fully well the people that are pushing for the reduction or elimination of meat consumption would suddenly reverse their tune if breeds of cows, hogs, and chickens were going extinct because we listened to them.
On the other hand though, if farm land were to resort to natural woodland (or whatever the natural land usage is wherever that field is) - genetic diversity for other animals that lived in those woodlands would increase- and there would be less extinction pressure on OTHER animals.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
If oregon is rising faster than the sea over human time frames, they have a whole different problem. Fast geologic upheaval like that is an excellent indicator of an impending earthquake. Once the energy of the system that is providing that rapid rise is released, they will definitely be dealing with a very rapid coastal water rise. Natural processes are not going to save us from unchecked human activity. They are just too slow.
Also, thanks for shattering my dream of moving to the coast of oregon.
Except far more people would be upset if you took away their meat sandwiches, than would be upset if you turned off cryptocurrencies.
Which has what to do with honestly assessing the modern economy's impact on the environment?
That's an important thing to realise. I suspect that in total, meat sandwiches are also contributing more CO2 than cryptocurrencies.
"suspecting" isn't really intellectually honest, though, is it? It's just speculation based on personal belief. Bitcoin alone generated approximately 8.25 MEGATONS of CO2 in 2013, and the networks' energy use has grown exponentially since then - it's estimated that, by July of next year, the bitcoin network will use more electricity per day than the entire population of the United States... to keep 1 cryptocurrency out of thousands alive.
That would be a lot of damned sandwiches.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
^ Note, that's just the current energy cost; if we were doing an apples-to-apples comparison, we would also need to factor in the manufacture, transport, etc of the computers used to run said network, as well as the carbon footprint of the energy sources utilized.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
If oregon is rising faster than the sea over human time frames, they have a whole different problem.
Gosh, I thought that was what I said. The Cascadia Subduction Zone Earthquake is supposed to happen any time now.
Fast geologic upheaval like that is an excellent indicator of an impending earthquake.
Really? I did not know that. Who could have imagined such a thing?
Speaking of low IQ comments. Here we have a comment where it's obvious he didn't even RTFA.
It's not a consequence of not funding the education system properly, it's a consequence of the indoctrination instead of teaching in the education system. People don't believe leftist bullshit. They have to be forced fed the leftist bullshit early on. Don't respect the country, don't respect the police, hate other people if they don't agree with you totally. Even hit other people that don't agree with you to the point the teachers sometimes will have other students beat up a student that doesn't go along with the indoctrination. Just look up student that stood for the pledge. I don't understand why we put up with this.
How does such off the wall insanity make it into print anywhere? I think someone needs to go back to middle school and look up carbon cycle and get some kind of handle on what greenhouse gasses are. (increasing the carbon fraction in the cycle by releasing carbon previously bound up in the soil during earlier epochs in the planet's geological history)
NRRPT/RCT