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?

[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]

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.

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.