Did you know that producing one pound of beef causes 60 pounds of Greenhouse Gases to be released into the environment? How about the fact that eating a pound of lamb has the same environmental impact as driving 41 miles in your car? In this post, we’ll talk about why foods have carbon footprints and what we can do about it.

Food has a carbon footprint because of a variety of factors including being grown, transported, and sold. For most products, the carbon emissions from food can be broken down into seven categories: 

• Changes in Land: The environment is harmed when land is cleared to grow certain crops or raise certain livestock. These damages usually come in the form of deforestation or changes in the soil’s carbon content.
• Farm: Machinery is used for farming on the soil which produces carbon emissions. In addition, while animals are growing, they may produce gases and manure. For example, a Danish study found that the average cow produces the CO2 equivalent of about 4 tons in methane every year! 
• Animal Feed: Animals require food to grow which has its own carbon footprint. Therefore, the carbon footprint of the animal feed is added to the total. 
• Processing: Many foods are processed from the raw product (things like raw meat and unmilled wheat) into items that you see in the grocery store.
• Transport: These “grocery store ready” items are transported to warehouses and retailers and the transport vehicles produce carbon emissions.
• Retail: At the retail store, items have to be temperature-controlled, sorted, and sold which all adds to the total emissions.
• Packaging: Many grocery store items are packaged in single-use plastics which (as the name suggests) are used once and then thrown away. The construction and disposal of single use plastic packaging requires fossil fuels and energy which must be added to the total.