Is your Easter chocolate bunny bad for the environment?

Recently, researchers from The University of Manchester studied the carbon footprint of chocolate in the United Kingdom.  The UK is the sixth highest chocolate-consuming country in the world.  Their research looked at the environmental impacts of chocolate's ingredients, manufacturing process, packaging and waste.  According to the researchers' findings, the UK chocolate industry creates about 2.1 tons of greenhouse gases a year.  The study also revealed that it takes about 1000 liters of water to produce just one bar of chocolate.   The two largest environmental impacts of chocolate include its packaging and acquiring its raw ingredients.  For example, most of the ingredients needed to produce chocolate travel to the UK from Africa or South America.  The transportation and production of these ingredients are very energy intensive.

The main objective of this study on chocolate's environmental impacts was to raise consumers' awareness in the hopes that consumers will make more informed choices on the food they purchase. The researchers also wanted to target the chocolate industry's faults in the hopes to make chocolate more sustainable and eco-friendly.  I think this article was very interesting because I didn't think a chocolate bar would impact the environment so negatively.  The study shows just how little consumers know about the foods they are buying in stores.

Click here to learn more about the environmental impacts of chocolate in the UK.

Comments

  1. AnonymousApril 5, 2018 at 4:58 AM

    I am surprised that chocolate has such a big impact on the environment and I think its a good idea to try to find more sustainable and eco-friendy ways to make chocolate because I don't foresee the demand for chocolate going down.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousApril 5, 2018 at 7:20 AM

    Man wasn't expecting chocolate of all things to harm the environment. Though it is consumed everywhere so I should have known. This was a very informative post and good job!

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousApril 5, 2018 at 7:23 AM

    Life is like a box of chocolates huh!? Who knew how literal they should take the saying. A real fun article to read!

    ReplyDelete

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