From the UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER and the “I’m going to have a sandwich for lunch, just for spite” department comes this exercise in climate stupidity equating sandwich types to miles driven in a car. So for extra spite, I’m going to drive my car to the nearest Subway sandwich shop today and order a foot-long, with double meat. Like this one.
For the rest of you that embrace this guilt building exercise, have a Tofu on Rye.
When will they learn you can’t motivate people by trying to make them feel guilty about everyday foods? I do predict though, at some point, just like they require for cars, California will require foods top have a “global warming impact” sticker in the not too distant future as a way of taxing those “carbon footprints”.
Is your sandwich bad for the environment?
Do you take a packed lunch to work or buy a sandwich from the shop? The carbon footprint of your sandwich could be having a major impact on greenhouse gas emissions according to new research.
Researchers at The University of Manchester have carried out the first ever study looking at the carbon footprint of sandwiches, both home-made and pre-packaged. They considered the whole life cycle of sandwiches, including the production of ingredients, sandwiches and their packaging, as well as food waste discarded at home and elsewhere in the supply chain.
Altogether the team looked at 40 different sandwich types, recipes and combinations. They found the highest carbon footprints for the sandwiches with pork meat (bacon, ham or sausages) and those containing cheese or prawns.
Of the recipes considered, the most carbon-intensive variety is a ready-made ‘all-day breakfast’ sandwich which includes egg, bacon and sausage.
The researchers estimate that this type of sandwich generates 1441 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2 eq.). This is equivalent to CO2 emissions from driving a car for 12 miles.
The sandwich with the lowest carbon emission equivalent is a simple home-made favourite, ham and cheese. The study also found that making your own sandwiches at home could reduce carbon emissions by a half compared to ready-made equivalents.
According to the British Sandwich Association (BSA) more than 11.5 billion sandwiches are consumed each year in the UK alone. Around half of those are made at home and the other half are bought over the counter in shops, supermarkets and service stations around the country. That means the UK spends nearly £8 billion a year on the breaded snack, at an average cost of £2 per snack.
Professor Adisa Azapagic, from the School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Sciences, said:
‘Given that sandwiches are a staple of the British diet as well as their significant market share in the food sector, it is important to understand the contribution from this sector to the emissions of greenhouse gases.
‘For example, consuming 11.5 billion sandwiches annually in the UK generates, on average, 9.5 million tonnes of CO2 eq., equivalent to the annual use of 8.6 million cars.’
The results show the largest contributor to a sandwich’s carbon footprint is the agricultural production and processing of their ingredients. Depending on the type, this can account for around 37%-67% of CO2 eq. for ready-made sandwiches.
Keeping sandwiches chilled in supermarkets and shops also contributes to their carbon footprint. This can account for up to a quarter of their greenhouse gas emission equivalent. Then there is the packaging material which comes in at up to 8.5 % and, finally, transporting materials and refrigerating sandwiches themselves adds a further 4%.
The study concludes that the carbon footprint of the snacks could be reduced by as much as 50 per cent if a combination of changes were made to the recipes, packaging and waste disposal. The researchers also suggest extending sell-by and use-by dates to reduce waste.
Professor Azapagic, who also heads up the Sustainable Industrial Systems research group, added: ‘We need to change the labelling of food to increase the use-by date as these are usually quite conservative. Commercial sandwiches undergo rigorous shelf-life testing and are normally safe for consumption beyond the use-by date stated on the label.’
The BSA also estimate that extending the shelf life of sandwiches by relaxing such dates would help save at least 2000 tonnes of sandwich waste annually.
The study also recommends reducing or omitting certain ingredients that have a higher carbon footprint, like lettuce, tomato, cheese and meat. Reducing ingredients, such as cheese and meat, would also reduce the amount of calories eaten, contributing towards healthier lifestyles.
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Reference: The paper, Understanding the impact on climate change of convenience food: Carbon footprint of sandwiches by Namy Espinoza-Orias, Adisa Azapagic; Sustainable Industrial Systems, School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Sciences, The University of Manchester was published in the Journal of Sustainable Production and Consumption https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2017.12.002
The Sandwich Islands are sinking a little today.
“The greatest contributor to the carbon footprint of both types of sandwich is the agricultural production of ingredients, …”
News Flash! – “Carbon based life discovered to make carbon foot print!”
What is the carbon footprint of government waste such as the over production needed to generate the tax to fund “studies” like this one?
What??? No mention of PB&J?
I wonder if I could get a grant to research the demographics of people who put the PB on one slice of bread and the J on the other then stick them together versus putting the PB on one slice and the J on top of the PB then adding the second slice of bread on top of that.
+1
Which kind of mustard is the least dirty carbon emitter?
I bet it’s Grey Poupon.
Study that. It’s important we know the contribution of mustard condiments to climate change you know…
Altogether the team looked at 40 different sandwich types, recipes and combinations. They found the highest carbon footprints for the sandwiches with pork meat (bacon, ham or sausages) and those containing cheese or prawns.
The sandwich with the lowest carbon emission equivalent is a simple home-made favourite, ham and cheese.
Help me with the logic, please. Eating ham and cheese from McDonalds is the worst thing one can eat, but making a sandwich at home with the same ingredients is the best thing to eat?
Seems to me that the only difference is the extra effort it takes to walk to the corner restaurant
If the sandwiches that have the highest carbon footprint are those containing ham and those containing cheese, how can the lowest be one that contains both?
Keep up Tom. If CO2 causes warming and cooling what stops cheese and ham being bad and good?
Just following climate change logic has to have this conclusion.
SteveT
Smelly idiots.
Little doubt that these Climate Cult ‘researchers’ are a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic.
But, on the other hand, perhaps this blatant stupidity was motivated by charging all the team’s lunches for a month or two, to their ‘research’ grant (and hence to the taxpayer).
What a bunch of Oxygen thieves.
“…. it is important to understand the contribution from this sector to the emissions of greenhouse gases”. No it’s not.
I am from Manchester so I will translate the message for those from just down road like.
Wot folks at University – ya know, those fancy buildings between the curry mile and City centre on Oxford Road – are trying to sell us is that all those fancy butties posh folk down South ‘ave from Subway like are driving up global temperatures. They say stick to traditional butties from Greggs, such as oven bottoms wi’ a bit of ham & cheese and your kids, kids will be saying ta very much for saving the planet. Even better still make your own, and wrap in newspaper rather than plastic.
Remember of course not to digress. Wholemeal bread and egg cause can cause personal emissions of a gas twenty-five times more deadly than CO2. And do please remember to forsake the curry mile, which can have similar impacts.
Translation : “butties” is Mancunian for “sandwiches“.
Thanks for a good laugh there Manicbeancounter. 🙂
Right now, I could just swim in a bacon butty.
When I worked in Manchester the typical sandwich was composed of about quarter of a pound of suitable filler – ham, cheese, tuna etc. – in a ‘barm cake’.
So my response is that I will make a point of making sandwiches with at least three different types of meat and exotic fillers from as many different regions of the world as possible and then drive at least twelve miles to a nice picnic spot to eat it. There…that should add so life giving CO2 to the atmosphere.
For people with calcium oxalate kidney stones, who are trying to follow a low oxalate diet, … tofu, spinach, and rye are ALL on the “avoid” list, as each is fairly high in oxalates, especially spinach.
But, hey, kidney stones are a small price to pay for a healthy environment where we suffer with them. The solution seems clear, however — ask for the voluntary self-extermination of all people with calcium oxalate kidney stones. Think of the children.
How would you like a meatless and cheese-less Ham and Cheese Sub?
Drive to the FURTHEST sandwich shop! Don’t these people hear how stupid they sound? They unconvince me more and more with their every word. When they all start moving to the arctic is when I’ll believe we might have a problem. Until then I see nothing to dislike about being warmer. I think in less than 3 years we’re all going to wish Global Warming was true. Sun has been very very quiescent. Not good for temps. Any speculation any where about why the Sun has gone so quiet?
It’s doing it for spite..
When they all start moving to the Arctic is when I celebrate that the loonies are leaving. They can create their own little utopia with all of their crazy ideas and leave the rest of us the heck alone.
Yes, but there’s no land for them to sit on in the Arctic. If they move up there, they will install solar furnaces which will threaten snowy owls and make the ice melt. They will then sink into the icy-cold water and flounder…. Oh.
Never mind.
If they really want people to change their behavior, they should address the matter this way:
It is way cheaper to make your own sandwich at home. Save “X” pounds/dollars a year!
Have they calculated the impact of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?
This is a prime example of too much funding in the area of climate science. What did they think the outcome of this study was going to be, people stop eating?
About time someone finally mentioned PB&J. It’s gotta have one of the lowest CO2 footprints.
Are you quite quite sure it isn’t April the 1st?
Once upon a time Manchester University had intelligent people studying and working there. Soon there will be no Subway (gone out of business) waiting to employ them when they finish their degrees.
SteveT
Amazing how that works!
A home made sandwich made of components purchased at grocery stores; sometimes at one grocery store.
Allegedly causes the lowest CO2 impacts; yet identical commercially made sandwiches made with commercially distributed components cause higher levels of CO2 emissions?
One thing is clear, the researchers are quite blinded by confirmation bias.
That sure sounds like an indictment against all foods. Why pick on sandwiches.
That school of alleged “chemical engineering and analytical sciences” appears to have quite a few difficulties with real objects in a real world.
A) How do these folks determine exactly how much cooling is required for a sandwich?
Their results sound suspiciously like calculating the gross energy demands and construction emissions then dividing by a small amount of sandwiches.
What is absent in this group’s study are any tendrils of common sense.
Tofu sandwiches require significant processing just to produce tofu.
It is not science.
According to these lunatics; food should be much more expensive than it is.
Obviously all commercial food growers, producers, processors, distribution, selling, etc. should go out of business.
Focusing their results on sandwiches ignores the end result that is a demand for people should starve.
How anyone can still deny the new world order is not a theory is beyond me.
Complete surveillance, check
Long term population reduction, check
Destroying nationhood, check
Homogenizing cultures by forcing an influx of immigrants who care not about the country, check
Poisoning the water, air, and food, check
Destroying the family unit, check
Endless war, check
Cashless society, nearly check
Biometric surveillance, check
Transhumanist AI agenda, check
Androgenous society of confusion, check
Smart grid energy control, check
Using the vital life nutrient carbon as Boogeyman, literally this is an attack on life itself because these people are legitimately satanic. Controlling everyone and everything based on the one tax no one can escape. Carbon dioxide output. From birth, a human will immediately begin amazing carbon debts that need repayed beginning when of working age and without cash they can shut off your ability to access anything in the market with the biometrics. The drones monitor the no-human zones (which are extensive BTW just review the agenda 21/2030 maps)… And on and on
Ten years ago I certainly had a harder time believing it possible, or even proving it. Now, they don’t even hide it anymore. That disgusting sandwich nonsense is predictive programming. Getting the population rest to accept this as normalcy.
It’s time for us to do something about this, but logical folk and not Marxists trend to be so individualistic that we rarely unite. I don’t have the answers but the evidence is mounting faster every day.
This has been fun. I’m sure there is more to come. But, Anthony, you misspelled the proper name of the subject at hand.
It should be SAMMICHES! 2 ms, as in ‘make me a sammich, da==it!’
I’ll give you my Philly cheesesteak sandwich when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Combine it with cheese fries and there’s no telling the depths I might go, to protect them.
Yeah, there are so many 10s of thousands of climate ‘scientists’ (remember Cooks analysis over 13000 papers over ten years), that they are casting about to find topics that haven’t been worked to the bone. How do they do this without laughing their a55es off? Its because we are flooding scientific institutions with sub 100 Is a since the doors were thrown wide open.
Eating all that meat with the resulting additional CO2 emissions has a positive feedback……….more food produced, more food to eat (-:
More food for animals to eat…… more animal meat to eat by humans…….more CO2 produced……… more food for humans and animals……..
http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/csdb/en/
“Following this month’s further upward revision to the forecast for the 2017 global cereal production, world cereal supplies in the 2017/18 season are expected to rise to an all-time high of nearly 3 331 million tonnes. While global cereal utilization in 2017/18 is also heading for an increase (1.2 percent) from the previous season, world cereal inventories are projected to climb steadily for the fifth consecutive season, rising to a record high level of almost 726 million tonnes.”
And the non edible plant world loves it too!
“Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds”
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth
Carbon is a SOLID. CO2 is a beneficial GAS. Eating sandwiches is not resulting in a “carbon footprint” which is just a made up bullshit term. Carbon, the solid has no effect on global warming. Carbon compounds form the basis for all life on earth.
When you irrigate your lawn with H2O are you leaving a hydrogen footprint?
“Carbon footprint” “Climate Crisis” “Catastrophic Anthropocentric Global Warming” “Extreme Weather” “Unprecedented Weather/Climate” Bullshit!
The last 4 decades have featured the best weather/climate and especially CO2 conditions for most life on this greening and slightly warmer planet since the Medieval Warm Period, 1,000 years ago that was this warm globally……….before people ate so many meat loaded sandwiches.
“Anthropocentric” = Anthropogenic
Well that’s good to know
Oh, wait. There must be a difference between a “carbon footprint” and a “carbon emission equivalent”
Now I’ve got it.
Sandwiches are pretty terrible over the counter in England. i can’t really complain if they improve the quality by whingeing about CO2. Seriously shoddy sandwichmanship needs to be righted.
Climate change – is there ANYTHING it can’t do? And to think, Man causes it all! We are like gods! Maybe better! And look at all the employment it’s caused…
NotChickenLittle “Climate change – is there ANYTHING it can’t do?”
Yes– it can’t prove a negative, because that is the entire fallacy that is climate change… and as I explained, it’s the fault of mainstream scientists themselves for allowing themselves to be baited into refuting the panic-mongers, against scientific protocols of first requiring them to validate their hypothesis… and this opened Pandora’s Box.