The Carbon Footprint of a Burger

McDonalds may want to take down that "Billions and Billions Served" tag-line.

Would it be practical for restaurants or stores such as Whole Foods to post data concerning the carbon footprint of individual products? For example, it would be an encouragement to purchase produce produced locally rather than at some distance if the local produce had a lower carbon footprint. Actually, could carbon credits be somehow integrated into that equation? What if that locally grown produce had a carbon credit attached that made it more financially appealing to nay-sayers (the people who are looking at the price-tag first)?

Or, to take it a step further, might there be some sort of carbon credit that would encourage people to grow their own produce?

I'm amazed at your lack of copying skills. The article says if all Americans eat the average amount of burgers, THEN it will equal 7500-15000 SUV's. You make it sound as if 1 person does that.

Looking at what what we're eating, and making some adjustments, holds promise of making significant improvements in energy efficiency. Read more here.

We don't need, not one SUV to get back and forth to work. An Escort or Civic would suffice. But a couple of burgers a week? Geez, you gotta eat.

"Geez, you gotta eat."

Of course. But the whole point is to show that different foods have different carbon footprints, and that being part of the global warming problem is not just about gas and coal. It's also about those extremely energy-intensive foods..

Just a quick note -- the 7,500-15,000 SUV-equivalent number mentioned here was based on the carbon emissions solely from the energy used, not from the added methane. Since the greenhouse effect including methane is 5-10 times as great as the energy-derived CO2 alone, the SUV equivalence is closer to 75,000.

**Author's comment**

Thanks for the clarification, Jamais!

CD

Pheonix and Las Vegas probably don't have 5 cows within 200 miles of either ones' city limits. It will be pretty hard to eat locally grown hamburgers, or any food for that matter.

Well, Las Vegas is a pretty unsustainable city overall.. Middle of the desert isn't exactly a prime spot..

Actually I do believe that both Las Vegas and Phoenix do have at least 5 cows within 200 miles.

Anyway, I only posted to say...that burger looks fantastic! If organic of course.

these numbers mean little without context. what are the relative costs of veggie, mushroom or tofu burgers? how much energy is used to heat/light greenhouses or mushroom farms, or to harvest the grain that goes into the ingredients. what about condiments? how much farther must a veggie burger be transported than a beef burger? what are the environmental costs associated with fertilizers? how much native vegetation survives on a grain farm vs. a ranch vs. a feedlot? how much soil erosion can one expect to see on a grain farm vs. a ranch vs. a feedlot? how do vegetable-based burgers fit into the labour landscape, as opposed to beef burgers? what is the difference in cost? what must you consume to replace the nutrients not present in a diet that contains meat?

i could go on forever, of course.

i mean, it's high school biology - meat is wasteful - but this piece isn't balanced in the least.

(Rob - papering an item to death with questions of minor to no relevance was a common tactic in the 90s. Please rest assured no one is reading past your first sentence.)

The overwhelming factor that multiplies the carbon footprint of the burger as compared to the soy burger is cattle feed. It takes several pounds of feed to raise a pound of beef. This factor dwarfs any other. Of course, as a result, far less fertilizer is needed to grow the same number of calories. And soy doesn't need antibiotics.

All the other factors my namesake above mentions are pretty much negligible.

Soy is not grown in greenhouses. It's grown on farms. Since you seem like an agriculture expert, its likely you know this. Soy is a commodity product, and is even used to some extent as an animal feed. As it a bulk product and shelf-stable, it is always less expensive to handle than live cattle, and transport is in fact cheaper regardless of the distance, unless you're bringing it from the moon.

The impact of vegetable calories will always be far lower than meat calories. Considering the world population explosion, our grandchildren will be getting most of their calories from vegetable matter.

I sometimes wonder if all this Mac Bashing is always justified. As Rob says, the article is meaningless unless it tells us the carbon footprint of other foods as well.

Besides, in the definition of a sustainable company (social, econmomic and environmental) I would suspect the big M scores surprisingly well, especially when benchmarked against say a independant burger store or roadhouse or 5 star restaruant for that matter. I understand big M contirbutes significant amounts of sponsorship/dontations to worthy causes, and in general provides useful employment for 1000s of our children (and adults). Not many roadhouses can claim to do this (or are profitable enough to do this).

Of course the big M is far from perfect, and does many bad things, but is it really any worse than everything else that is out there? - I suspect not.

The average American eats three burgers a week?!? You Americans are so gonna go to hell!! :-)

I agree with the prior poster ... this sounds like a heck of a lot, but how much does it take to produce other items. Plus, if you do this on a carbon footprint per calorie basis, I'll bet the burger wins over some veggies that have very low calories (e.g. celery).

If I cannot eat a cheeseburger, then I could care less if the Earth dies. Give me free cheeseburgers for life and I'll join a scientific team to buikd a machine to transform carbon into vegitables........wait, natures already handling that.....so ill take my burger with lettuce and tomatoes also :-)

Of course other items have a footprint too, but meat is an order of magnitude above on average.

For a piece of vegetable, all you need is the land it uses + the water it needs to grow + amount of time it takes to grow + energy needed to get it and ship it.

For meat you need the land used by the animals + the land use by the crops eaten by the animal & energy to harvest & ship * the number of years the animal lives + the water used by the animal * years + the water used by the crops it eats * years.

And if it's not organic, add fossil-fuel based fertilizers, pesticides, antibiotics and hormones to the mix...

The lower you eat on the foot chain, the less land/energy/water you use..

And with a lot fast food using meat from south America where they slash & burn the amazon forest, that's even worse.

With an acre, you can feed a lot more people eating vegetables than you can feed people eating cows who eat what grows on that acre.

See this.

I think we can cut down on the cost of transporting of cheeseburgers if we allow our average citizens to grow cheeseburgers in their backyard and slaughter them.

"The lower you eat on the foot chain, the less land/energy/water you use.."

So, by your standard, then, we should all aspire to become amoeba cells.

how much carbon is released after the burgers are consumed?

Where exactly is all this traveling going on? The meat slaughtering facilities are in the same state, so are the cows that are raised. Our family kills deer we raise on our land of our walnut farm and slaughter it at a local butcher. If this is such a harmful practice as the article would suggest then there's not that much that can be done to improve.

BTW, our neighbor raises cattle, so it's not like it's going much more of a distance than the deer. So the results would be the same.

The study assumes a lot doesn't it? There was no mention of average except for in consumption. It also assumed all cattle are fed with feed (not the case, they are grass fed here, and the deer feeds mainly on clover or whatever else is growing around). Was the data taken during the winter or was it done during the summer? What's the distance in transport? The article doesn't mention a lot of information so it's safe to say a lot of unsupported assumptions were made. Sounds like a sloppy study.

I eat low on the food chain and I am a healthy vegan, not an amoeba. :)

Doug, many, MANY farmed animals are transported long distances throughout their lives, not just for slaughter.

From an HSUS report on transport (http://www.hsus.org/farm/resources/research/pubhealth/live_animal_transport.html):

"In the United States alone, more than 50 million live cattle, sheep, and pigs(1) and an untold number of the more than 9 billion chickens, turkeys, and other birds raised for food(2) are traded across state lines in a single year. Before they are slaughtered, livestock travel an average of 1,000 miles,(3) but some journeys are much longer.(4) Long-distance transport not only increases the opportunities for animals to come into contact with—and to spread—diseases, but also increases their susceptibility to infection.(5)"

See also: Driving Pain: The Long-Distance Transport of Farmed Animals (http://www.api4animals.org/a6a_transport.php)

So this is a problem of some magnitude. Food systems are largely not local these days.

carbon footprint of your computer
your ipod
fair trade
wto
soy homogenization of vegitation
subsidy of farms
soy within fast food chain food
footprint of synthetic (ie vegan) clothing materials
footprint of the fur industry
cascadia
sustainability is the new grunge
local, organic
the tyranny of whole foods vs local markets
starbucks syndrome
how good cheeseburgers taste
picking battles
priority of problems
food politics change
footprint of importing anything
macrobiotic
"urban macro"
footprint of agricultural growth in the amazon
the long battle towards a "sustainable" human food/consumption/waist cycle
is it possible?

Ok, well, I live in a farming community where medium sized farms raise dairy and beef. Here's what we do, we use the tractor to plow the soil, then we use it again to put on fertilizer and then again for lime (we have acid soil). We then use the tractor to plant corn or oats. Once the corn is up, we use the tractor to spray for insects. We repeat that halfway through the growing season. The corn dries on the stalk (partly), then we use the combine to harvest the corn and a truck to drive it to the mill where it is dried the rest of the way. Then we drive the corn home or wherever. Then it finally gets to the cows. They eat it (usually mixed with other stuff as our own feed mix) and they digest it and make manure. Manure is smelly because of the methane it makes. There is one place here in this county where they had a grant and they built a big concrete tank with a stirrer and a heater. The tank is covered and the gas it makes is then used to make the electricity to power the milkers, cool the bulk tank, and run the barn lights. It's not that we farmers are against reducing our fuel costs. A lot of our profit is eaten up in the cost of fuel and expensive farm machinery. It's just that how do you change this whole system when your living depends on it? We have tried some no till with borrowed machinery but it costs a lot to convert to no till. Hey, we're open to suggestions. We have also tried to do some grass fed cattle but it takes a pretty good pasture to produce the cattle that way. And grass fed dairy? We'd never keep up with the milk company's demand with just grass fed dairy. Anyway, I don't eat a McD's, we eat our own meat and deer. McD's doesn't taste good to me.

I personally think the average 3 burgers a week statement is wrong, the sample you did is probably flawed interviewing people inside a burger king i expect.

For the record, no one mention MCD because i struggle to find meat at all in there burgers.

It's amazing the power of individuals' collective daily decisions to impact the planet. It's sad though that so few people understand this collective power.

I hope people will start to become more aware of this collective impact.

I grew up in this 'so wasteful' society at just the right time and place. We wasted very little because we had very little. Cattle, Feed, Produce, Dairy, were all within a few miles. It allowed my grandparents and parents and of course my ancestors to survive. The 'Evil' Industrial Revolution changed the 'Utopia' of my youth to a sociiety of plenty in the USA and elsewhere, where even the 'poor' are overweight. Even the 'poor', as well as young children own cellphones. The Carbon footprint of which, has not been freely published by the way. Lets also study the rest of the 'things' in society which leave a carbon footprint. I like the previous listing above. My blog at

http://daflikkers.blogspot.com/
discusses a little of the problems with scientific studies, as a few of the previous commentors have brought to attention. I just have to face it, the world is never again going to be the perceived , 'Utopia' of my 'blessed' youth.
Blogengeezer

In Uk Carbon labelling is now live - major brands - Walkers Crisps, Innocent Smoothies and Boots Shampoos all have carbon footprint labels on them e.g. 35g of crisps have embodied carbon dioxide equiv of 75g printed on the packet with a commitment to reduce with the Carbon Trust - see www.carbon-label.co.uk for details

I have a question. How do you calculate carbon footprints of foods?

I must say I like my burger medium rare, so I am skeptical of the argument. I mean where the cowboys that killed all the buffalo eco warriors? Man is omnivorous which I am thankful while I enjoy a side of fries.

It is self evident that it cost more to raise meat than grain. But then again it taste so much better.

We should be thankful we live in a country where are farmers are so productive. Also were factors such as the reduction in carbon that a field of feed produces. Also manure is an excellent fertilizer that must not be produced and helps plants grow.

Also, Soy is not the solution! There is much information coming to light about the problems with Soy. See http://www.drlam.com/opinion/soyandestrogen.cfm

Soy and veggies need fertilizer to help them grow, right? So we need cows to make fertilizer. We might as well "re-use" the cows to feed our citizens when they are done making fertilizer.

Personally, I prefer an In&Out Double Double, animal style...

Carbon is certainly the broadest measure we have for identifying the environmental impact of producing and transporting food and other goods. But there are others. Embodied water is a key one.

Even though carbon labels are already on the shelves, it is going to take time to figure out how carbon footprints can be done fairly and in a way that consumers can understand. The whole point is to allow consumers to compare products using a standard measure, and right now there is no standard. And the standard must recognise that virtual water is traded between countries.

I live in New Zealand, we are good farmers and dont waste energy like americans and even worse europeans do when making food. at the moment the english are wanking on about food miles and carbon footprints, the transport of food from its source to the store contributes a minimal amount to its carbon footprint, virtually all NZ food has a smaller carbon footprint than equivalent english/european food even after transport from the exact opposite side of the world. More carbon is created by driving your car to the store to collect your groceries than by transporting an average weekly shop 12000 miles on a ship. I personally dont care about carbon footprints or food miles and will just buy the tastiest food

Hate to be accused as wanking on but so what that a burger has a carbon footprint, of course it does, everything does. My 18 mnth old son has one. Do the best we can , try and make a difference and accept that some people eat animals some don't.

The Climate Conservancy is conducting life cycle analyses of various consumer packaged goods (think energy bars, drinks, cereals, etc.). Info from our analyses will go onto a label that will tell you how "Climate Conscious" a product is relative to its monetary value (so-called greenhouse gas intensity). Stay tuned and watch your supermarket shelves.

Oh Please. All of this carbon footprint talk makes me want to hurl my cheeseburger from lunch. Do half of you even know what the hell you're talking about?? Or is it because it's the current environmental whacko hot topic of the day? Vegan? Certainly NOT for me but I understand and respect your right to be one. Me? I'll continue to drive my GMC Sierra 2500, work on my ranch and raise my cattle and horses, eat meat, fly around the world on fossil fuel consuming jets and do whatever else I want regardless what the carbon footprint is. What a load of crap this carbon footprint business is. But then again, maybe I should just purchase 'carbon credits' like Al Gore so I can say I lead a 'carbon neutral' life instead of actually changing the way I live it!

Jason, you're incredibly hostile towards treehugger values. May I ask why you're here?

"Pheonix and Las Vegas probably don't have 5 cows within 200 miles of either ones' city limits. It will be pretty hard to eat locally grown hamburgers, or any food for that matter."

You are woefully uniformed. Both Phoenix and LAs Vegas have pick-your-own farms just outside of city limits, and while Las Vegas might not have many cows we do have a pig farm that "recycles" the leftovers from the numerous buffets in town and provides local meat. Phoenix has many farms in the outlying areas that provide local meat and produce.

Jason clearly likes to shag cows and feels insulted.

One issue not raised in the meat versus vegetable discussion is the relative amounts of vegetables required to equal the nutrient content of the burger. This calculation, based on our current food system structure actually leads to much more carbon loss per calorie or unit of nutrients. A quick example is lettuce from California transported across the US. At 90% water, that is a very carbon expensive proposition.

Who are we kidding, this planet has been around long before we were here and will be here long after we're all gone. If you're a vegan for environmental reasons, although a worthy cause you're completely delusional. Like most things in nature, we adapt to the changes in our environment and the planet will continue to do so.