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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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

[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.

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.