People are always talking about the carbon footprint of cars and deforestation
but what about something simple like...
my lunch
this delicious BLT sandwich!
What path did it take to reach my plate?
What footprint did it leave on the planet?
♫ GOOD QUESTION ♫
Luckily, scientists have carefully mapped every step of this sandwich's journey.
Let's start with the slices of bread
For this much bread you just need a ten by ten inch square of soil
A single-serving field!
A tractor plows that tiny field
burning a single drop of diesel
and releasing a puff of carbon dioxide
- about enough CO2 to fill a pint glass
The tractor comes back - this time to plant the seeds
Another drop of fuel,
another puff of CO2
And now the tractor smooths the soil
It's time to add a little fertilizer - about half a tablespoon
You'd probably use a tractor to spread that fertilizer
But there's more ... that fertilizer was brewed up in a factory
creating a couple gallons of CO2 in the process
Some of that fertilizer helps the wheat grow
but some of it is broken down by microbes in the soil
They belch out the equivalent of another gallon of CO2
Now it's harvest time!
Our little field has yielded ... a third of a cup of grain
Now come a bunch of steps that require electricity electricity that comes in part from burniing fossil fuels
Time to dry it
Drive it to the mill
And grind it into flour.
Then on to the bakery!
A little water, sugar, yeast - each with their own carbon journey
And into the oven!
Our slices are put in a plastic bag
(a plastic bag that was also made in a factory)
And shipped off to the store where I picked the up.
Every step took a little carbon that was in the form of fuel
and put it into the atmosphere as CO2
You can see the biggest chunk of carbon comes from the fertilizer.
But wait - that’s just the bread!
We could follow our leaves of lettuce from their field
The tomatos from their nursery
All the ingredients in our mayo
Each journey puts a little more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere
But the biggest footprint comes from those four strips of bacon
Not only do we have to raise, process, and transport 1/1000th of a pig
We have to cultivate the plants to feed that pig
To get this one sandwich we've released
800 grams of CO2 (equivalent)
That's enough gas to fill 100 of these gallon jugs
Eat one of these sandwiches every day for a year, and you'd release the same amount of CO2
as you would if you drove a car from New York to Chicago
It turns out this simple sandwich isn't so simple
Of course - nothing is.
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