Calories, Fat & Carbon Count in Your Potato Chips
August 2, 2007
Posted by CindyC in : Rants & the Ridiculous , trackback
In addition to the low carbon diet, carbon calculators, potato chips (or “crisps” for the Brits) is the latest product to show their carbon footprint. In July, Walkers (division of Frito Lays) has rolled out a carbon label on all 13 flavors of its potato crisps in the UK. This effort is in partnership with The Carbon Trust.
According to Walkers for a bag of Cheese & Onion Crisps, total CO2 impact for a standard bag of crisps is 75 g (or 0.165 lbs) with breakdown of:
-Raw Materials: 44%
-Manufacture: 30%
-Packaging: 15%
-Distribution: 9%
-Disposal (of empty packaging): 2%
The Carbon Trust label displays the carbon impact and the company’s commitment in continuing to reduce that impact. Other companies like Boots (maker of beauty products) and Innocent Drinks, along with 150 other UK companies, have pledged interest or commitment to the program. The program also hopes to raise consumer awareness and influence purchasing decisions to encourage more businesses to focus on their environmental impact.
With the label, a consumer can compare similar products or even different ones like Walkers Crisps to a (250ml) bottle of Innocent Mango & Passion Fruit Smoothie with total CO2 impact 294 g (or 0.65 lbs of carbon).
Overall, I think it’s an interesting initiative and if it promotes businesses to take action, I’m all for it. However, at least for me, the whole onslaught of carbon calculation and offsets is getting a bit confusing. Out of curiosity, I did a little searching and a carbon equivalent comparison. According to epa.gov, average household of 2 generates about 5.5 lbs of CO2 equivalent daily (or 2,020 lbs annually) from household trash. If each person in that same household consumed 8.5 bottles of Innocent Drinks Smoothies per day, they would match their household waste footprint. On the flip side, if this same household somehow offset its waste emission through recycle, reuse and compost, a mere 3,100 bottles of Innocent Drink will negate the effort. Don’t mean to be a contrarian but right now, I’m just trying to working through all these carbon calculations….
CindyC at Organicpicks
*P.S. I have nothing against Walkers or Innocent - I commend them for their efforts. They were just handy examples for my rant today.
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Comments»
There are also a load of carbon calculators out there, each one slightly differs from the others. So each calculator will yield you a different result. What’s a consumer to do? Hard enough to plow through the labels on fats, sugars, and transfat. Does overloading consumers with carbon info lead to green fatigue?