Thinking About Turkey?
Claire Roby, Clean Air-Cool Planet
By Claire Roby
Carbon Accounting Coordinator
Clean Air-Cool Planet
Everyone is thinking of food this week in the run up to Thanksgiving. The question “Should I fry a turkey or stuff a turducken?” has sparked volumes of internet chatter, and it seems like even my work at CACP has recently become food-obsessed.
For about a month now, I have been plugging data into our CHEFS (CHarting Emissions from Food Services) tool. Still in its pilot stage, this tool will allow institutions such as universities, hospitals, and corporate cafeterias to measure the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of their food service operations.
This is a very different type of analysis than that of our popular Campus Carbon CalculatorTM, but it presents a unique opportunity to explore the institution’s real footprint, to spur the further development of life cycle study of food in the U.S., and to work with providers at every level of food production to “green” their operations. For example, the food service company ARAMARK is a founding sponsor of CHEFS and was instrumental in completing our first pilot program to test the new tool. Through this collaboration, we have had the opportunity to work with many of their internal stakeholders and to discuss future emissions reductions activities for their business and the industry as a whole.
No matter how lofty the goals of a new project are, I have to admit that data entry had been fairly boring – until we started seeing some interesting results. For example, one university was able to obtain data on approximately 75% of its produce and dairy purchases. Just four randomly selected products — tomatoes, potatoes, cream and cream cheeses — made up 8.5% of those catalogued purchases, and those totaled 282 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. That is the equivalent of consuming 32,000 gallons of gasoline. Surprisingly, the produce accounted for 70% of that total—surprising because generally dairy would be assumed to have a greater footprint per unit. Cows are notoriously inefficient at converting feed to usable meat and dairy, requiring a lot of inputs to produce each pound of meat and emitting potent methane. After further investigation, we realized that was in part due to the assumption that all the tomatoes were hothouse-grown, which the university in question knows is not the case for most of their tomatoes. However, the hothouse numbers are the best data set available for the production of tomatoes.
This preliminary research suggests two conclusions: First, that we need a much greater degree of available and peer-reviewed research on different production and distribution methods in order to be able to obtain realistic, useful evaluations of life-cycle impacts for dining service purchasers and decision-makers. Second, even adjusting for specific elements of the life-cycle (e.g. tomato production method), there is good reason to believe that the life-cycle GHG emissions resulting from dining at this university are as great, or greater, than the direct emissions from powering all of their 250 buildings—and that the vast majority of those emissions occur before the foods ever reach the campus. Given that this campus as been very proactive in addressing and reducing their dining service’s environmental impact, it seems fair to say that the impact of dining services for colleges and universities is, generally speaking, very significant indeed.
Sound unbelievable? Consider that the Pew Center on Global Climate Change estimates that one third of anthropogenic warming is from worldwide agriculture and land use change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change explained how this is possible by making an important distinction: while the increase in carbon dioxide concentration is primarily due to fossil fuel use and land use change, the warming attributable to methane and nitrous oxide is primarily due to agriculture.
In the end, CHEFS will be an ongoing learning process just as much as it will be a definitive tool for estimating emissions. Regardless, it has already served as a reminder of how important it is to consider the impact of what we eat. Watch out next spring for webinars on emissions from dining services and how to get involved with the CHEFS Tool. Perhaps there is room at your Thanksgiving table for everyone’s guesses whether the turkey or the ham has a greater footprint.
For more information on the impact of food, see:
Explore posts in the same categories: Campus Climate Action, Carbon Management, FoodTags: carbon accounting, carbon footprint, Charting Emissions from Food Services, CHEFS, cows emissions, dairy emissions, dining services, Food, foodprint, low carbon meal, thanksgiving, turkey
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