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).

Comments

wha?

[cascadingstylesheet]

Oh good heavens. You people are insane.

Re:wha?

[Brett Buck]

Agreed, this is getting far beyond parody at this point. Just absurd.

Re:wha?

[tattood]

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).

Wow, we didn't even have to ask for a car analogy.

Re:wha?

[Baton Rogue]

Wow, we didn't even have to ask for a car analogy.

But what kind of car? A diesel? V8? V6? What about a Tesla, or Volt?

Re:wha?

[Oswald McWeany]

I want to know. If I feed a horse my ready made breakfast sandwich, how many miles can he trot on the calories from that breakfast sandwich? (carrying me of course).

What if I convert my sandwich to biodiesel? How far can my car travel with that? Would it be more efficient to feed my car breakfast sandwiches than diesel?

Re:wha?

[Betty Crocker]

At least Miss Mash isn't spamming more pro-government net "neuterality" FUD or more anti-Russian FUD.

Re:wha?

[cayenne8]

Yep...

They keep getting more and more ridiculous with stuff like this, and then wonder why more less and less people give a shit about global change this or recycle that.

I mean, really, my breakfast burrito is now on a hit list?

Fuck off. I didn't care that much before, I really don't give a shit now.

And I'm not alone....

Re:wha?

[darkshadow]

But How far can your car go if the sandwich is fed to Mr. fusion?

Re:wha?

[JoshuaZ]

I don't see what is insane about it. It makes implicitly a whole bunch of useful points: First, that transport and direct personal electrical consumption aren't the only producers of CO2. Second, that as our economy and society currently stands, the production of CO2 is going to be pretty large no matter what. Third, it gives a good feel for when one is talking about CO2 production just how much one is talking about. Honestly, this is substantially more CO2 than I would have expected for this, and I'm someone who cares a lot about minimizing CO2 production (I don't own a car and use public transit whenever possible and I rarely eat meat in part because of meat's CO2 and methane produciton). This seems useful and interesting.

Re:wha?

[Train0987]

If a damned sandwich is going to put Florida underwater then they are pretty much screwed already. You are undermining your whole cause with nonsense like this. These stories are why fewer and fewer people take you even a little bit seriously.

Re:wha?

[ShanghaiBill]

Tell that to the people of Florida, when they are underwater in the not too distant future.

Silly alarmism makes that more likely to happen, since it jades the public, and reduces the credibilty of scientists.

Brits should be offended that their tax dollars were spent on something as frivolous as this "study".

Re:wha?

[gnick]

...discounting the carbon emissions of making the bicycle.

There's the gotcha. That's why I walk everywhere. Barefoot, naked, and fueled by fruit, nuts, and veggies.

Re:wha?

[coastwalker]

I know Slashdot needs some clickbait to keep the advertisers happy but really. This is so obviously a troll that anyone posting heartfelt thoughts below is really wasting their time.

Re:wha?

[JoshuaZ]

There's nothing insane about that. Trying to eat fewer high CO2 producing foods takes minimal effort. But one reason that many people are in favor of a carbon tax (with appropriate offsets so it is reasonably revenue neutral) is because price calculations are a good way of getting people to do this essentially automatically. But if you do want to not think about it much, one thing you can do is simply donate to carbon offsetting causes. By some metrics, Cool Earth's rainforest preservation work has the most negative CO2 per a dollar https://www.coolearth.org/get-involved/donate-cool-earth/. They are extremely efficient, and by some metrics it is about $10 worth of offset to Cool Earth for a trans-Atlantic flight, which means that simply donating a very small amount each month will be more than enough. There are good similar work such as Everybody Solar which purchases solar panels for non-profits like museums and homeless shelters https://www.everybodysolar.org/, and the Solar Electric Light Fund https://self.org/ which gets solar lights for people in developing countries. (I don't unfortunately have a charity that I'm really happy with doing wind power right now to recommend and the same issue with nuclear power.) So, if you don't want to think about these things, by all means, feel free to donate.

Re:wha?

[SlaveToTheGrind]

But if you do want to not think about it much, one thing you can do is simply donate to carbon offsetting causes. By some metrics, Cool Earth's rainforest preservation work has the most negative CO2 per a dollar https://www.coolearth.org/get-... [coolearth.org]. They are extremely efficient, and by some metrics it is about $10 worth of offset to Cool Earth for a trans-Atlantic flight, which means that simply donating a very small amount each month will be more than enough.

Wait, what? This entire problem can go away just by planting more green shit and/or preserving the green shit we already have? This is fantastic news! You really should spread the word to all the frothing activists out there who want us to live in adobe huts and give each other rides to work in rickshaws.

Re:wha?

[AmiMoJo]

This is just the headline to get funding. It's like those "ignoble" scientific studies that are actually quite valuable once you get past the headline.

They did a study on the carbon impact of various foods. To get some PR and funding they did this little stunt.

As for your sandwich... It's probably one of the first foods that will start using artificial ingredients. Well, butter began being replaced long ago, but soon meat and probably cheese will be too.

Re:wha?

[JoshuaZ]

No. This is fundamentally confused about how the carbon cycle works. Making a plant takes in CO2, and the CO2 I exhale represents the carbon eaten from that. Regular eating by itself is essentially carbon neutral. The energy cost is mostly coming from things like fertilizer, transport of material, etc. But yes, we're not going to make people completely carbon neutral- but we don't need to. We don't need to have a zero delta carbon society, just a much smaller production. And there are many things related to that that you can easily do to help out with that, both at a personal level, and at a level of helping others, such as donating to Cool Earth and Everybody Solar.

Re:wha?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Your lack of appreciation for the incomparable delights of cheddar makes the rest of your post highly suspect.

Re:wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

As for your sandwich... It's probably one of the first foods that will start using artificial ingredients. Well, butter began being replaced long ago, but soon meat and probably cheese will be too.

Here in Finland its illegal to sell and advertize american cheese as cheese because its at best a "cheeselike substance"

Good grief

[Notabadguy]

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.

Re:Good grief

[DamnOregonian]

Living things on this planet breathe. They exhale. Sometimes we humans kill and eat them.

This is a carbon-neutral process.

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 belies a complete lack of understanding of the carbon cycle :/

Save the environment - stop eating plants that absorb CO2 and eat more meat.

Whether you eat plants, or animals, you're merely eating a link in the carbon cycle.

This article (and study) isn't making the insane claim that the meat in the sandwich, or the bread in the sandwich is a carbon-costly ingredient... They're measuring the cost of transportation, refrigeration, etc, etc - the things that require non-cycle sourced carbon to produce the final product.
Your ignorance makes this problem intractable. I hope you understand that some day.

Re:Good grief

[sexconker]

As a food source, calorie for calorie, meat is way more resource-intensive than pants.

Bullshit. You may need more of x resources to get a given amount (by weight) of meat than you would with plants, but you get all that back out at the end. It's a closed-loop. The most common comparison I see is for water. Water doesn't disappear when you use it to grow crops to feed to livestock to butcher for meat.

Even if you imagine that pigs and cows and chickens are unnecessary middlemen for the human diet, where are they taking their cut from, exactly? Does a slaughtered pig abscond to piggy heaven with a gallon of water and a small plot of land? Or does the whole damn thing get reincorporated into the environment in one way or another?

Meat is vastly more nutritious than plants are, meat is critical for human development, and meat is delicious. If you don't like it, don't eat it. Meat isn't doing you any harm. And if you're worried about the rest of us not having enough water or land to raise livestock to keep up with our current diets, you can relax. If we ever get to such a point it will self-correct via economic pressures well before anyone has to go hungry for lack of production. And even if we somehow got to that point, you'll be there to show us all how to eat shitty vegetables like kale and quinoa and enjoy the resulting hard poops interspersed with pockets of the foulest gases imaginable.

Re:Good grief

[freeze128]

"Whether you eat plants, or animals, you're merely eating a link in the carbon cycle."
Well, if I'm eating links, they might as well be pork sausage links.

Die humans!

[Train0987]

Humans must be destroyed in order to save humanity. New at 11.

Re:Global Warming Is Haram

[Narcocide]

Well, you can't eat sunbeams, so maybe a better solution would be to find some more sustainable sources of feed for the livestock.

Someone Calculate the

[Tulsa_Time]

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-)

Re:Lame

[bryanbrunton]

Actually it is from the:

Lets-Honestly-Assess-How-Badly-The-Modern-Economy-Is-Making-The-Planet-Unlivable-For-Man Department.

Re:Don't eat meat

[gnick]

>> It's better for the animals

(Smacks forehead. Wistfully remembers when Slashdot was for people with triple-digit IQs and a sense of humor.)

I'm not even sure it's better for the animals. If it wasn't for meat-eaters, a lot of the animals in this country never would have been born. Nobody's keeping herds of pet cattle.

Re:Global Warming Is Haram

[Oswald McWeany]

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.

One day I will write a book

[Dirk Becher]

"How to feel bad about EVERYTHING!"

It will cleanse the world of everyone who doesn't worship The Lulz.

Eating Human-raised Animals

[DrYak]

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.

Re:Bullshit

[Obfuscant]

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.