Two Feet are Better than One

From a consumer standpoint, carbon footprints are like walking, you can go much further with two feet than on one.

Last month Coca-Cola sparked a little food fight in the U.K. when they published green-house-gas (GHG) emissions of their core products. Coke was immediately compared to the footprint of Innocent's fruit smoothies. Innocent was the first U.K. beverage company, working with Carbon Trust, to publish its footprint.

According to the numbers, a ml of Coke emits 38% less GHGs than a ml of Innocent smoothie:

• A 330ml can of Coke embodies the equivalent of 170g of carbon dioxide (CO2e).


• A 250ml bottle of Innocent mango and passion fruit smoothie has a carbon footprint of 209g.

Innocent questioned whether it is fair to compare a product made of crushed fruit and packaged in 100% recycled plastic to carbonated, sugar water in a partly recycled aluminum can. Several bloggers also didn't think it was "comparing apples with apples".

Is the comparison fair? That's funny. I agree that they both aren't apples. They are both discretionary beverages and convenience foods. But let's compare the smoothie to an apple. If we assume that roughly 85% of the weight of the smoothie is fruit (the rest being bottle and possibly some added water), the smoothie emits roughly 0.84 lbs CO2e/lb which is pretty close to numbers for frozen fruit and fruit juice. Fresh fruit however emits roughly 0.3 lbs CO2e/lb. So the smoothie has almost three times the footprint of fresh fruit. Comparing Coke to its main ingredient tap water is pretty hard on Coke. 300 ml of U.K. tap water emits only 0.1 gram of CO2e.

In both cases you are putting roughly 1/3^rd lb of GHG into the atmosphere for convenience - the equivalent to what a car emits over 1/3^rd of a mile. Maybe this is the comparison that matters.

This is exactly what we need! With only two beverages footprints, people are talking about what it means and digging deeper into how products are really made and what the impacts are. With the footprints of tap water, juice, frozen and fresh fruit, we learn a great deal more about what our convenience lifestyle choices really cost.

Note that Coca-Cola subsequently bought an undisclosed minority stake in Innocent for £30 million. Maybe they felt bad about the whole thing.