Cheese vs Coffee: carbon footprint
Cheese23.88kg CO₂e / kg
vs
Coffee28.53kg CO₂e / kg
Cheese or Coffee? Here's what each one costs the climate, measured per kilo over its whole life.
Cheese runs about 23.88 kg CO₂e a kilo. Coffee runs 28.53.
It's close. Cheese and Coffee land in roughly the same place.
Cheese: Same cows, same methane. Milk and cheese carry it in every glass and slice.
Coffee: Comes from growing and processing the crop, plus whatever it ships in.
Per-kilo numbers skip portion size and how the food was farmed, so take them as the shape of things, not the last word.
More match-ups
Figures from OWID / Poore & Nemecek 2018, licensed CC-BY 4.0.
How we get these numbers: Methodology.