It’s been a year since the last eco tip about chocolate, and since then, the price of chocolate in the UK has gone up 50% because of the increased occurrence of droughts, extreme heat, extreme rainfall and disease outbreaks, due to global warming in cocoa-growing countries. Both Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire are projected to be…
Tag: food
Alcohol in Bottles
Until a national bottle deposit return scheme is created to enable re-use of glass bottles, they will remain the most energy-intensive packaging and transport option for alcohol. Large amounts of energy are needed, and it generally comes from fossil fuels. Both hops farms (pictured) and vineyards in many countries are threatened by local changes in…
Induction Hobs
“Now we’re cooking with gas!”, they used to say – a quote from a North Sea gas advert years ago. Cooking with an induction hob is the way to go now though, to save energy and CO2 emissions. Induction hobs generate heat in the pan – no heat is produced unless a pan is on…
Keep Peat in Bogs not Bags
Mushrooms, for peat’s sake? It seems Britain and Ireland’s mushroom growers use nothing but peat from our extensive CO2-storing peat bogs, adding to the continued decimation and massive CO2 emissions caused by the gardening trade. As part of its campaign to save our heritage from the effects of climate change, the National Trust has removed…
Organic and Cheap?
Organic food is produced without agrochemicals but generally costs more. Perversely, some marketing for organic food leads us to believe it’s only for the wealthy, presumably because the marketing is based on its high cost or because they believe it must taste better, and usually it doesn’t. It’s just better for nature, the farms and…
Good Coffee
80% of coffee is grown by smallholder farmers, a population of 125 million spreading from Brazil to Vietnam. The farmers are sadly but typically the ones to see the least profit from their coffee – “large holder” farmers often stop producing when the coffee price on the international commodity markets drops too low, and smallholders…
Chocolate
Recently chocolate has been getting a lot of bad press because climate analysts have started to flag up the enormous and damaging land use changes that cocoa agriculture causes. 70% of the CO2 in chocolate comes from the cocoa. The rest would be from the milk, transport, factories and so on. Before you feel bad…
UPFs – Ultra-processed Foods
If something is ultra-processed, it’s going to have a larger carbon footprint, use more water to make, most likely be associated with factory-farmed meat or diary and the pollution, come from further afield, have more packaging and of course, not be so good for your body. What makes some food UPF though, now the acronym’s…
Diet and CO2 Emissions
The first of November was World Vegan Day, a reminder that a totally plant-based diet is the everyday reality for about 1% of the world population. Reducing our CO2 emissions is imperative so we could pick up some useful tips here, because reducing the amount of meat we eat is one of the top things…
Pesky Pumpkin Remains
Halloween sees people the world over getting creative with pumpkin carving and results in tons of wasted pumpkins if people don’t have the means, the time or the oomph to make good use of this great veg. The main rule is to make sure it doesn’t end up in landfill, where the rotting vegetable matter…