Cheese vs Dark chocolate: carbon footprint
Cheese or Dark chocolate? Here's what each one costs the climate, measured per kilo over its whole life.
Cheese runs about 23.88 kg CO₂e a kilo. Dark chocolate runs 46.65.
Dark chocolate is the heavier choice, about 2.0× Cheese.
Swap Dark chocolate for Cheese and you cut about 22.77 kg a kilo, near 49% off.
Per kilo, that gap is a 133 km drive in a diesel car.
Cheese: Same cows, same methane. Milk and cheese carry it in every glass and slice.
Dark chocolate: Cocoa is tied to deforestation, so a chocolate bar hides a surprisingly heavy footprint.
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.