Cheese vs Eggs: carbon footprint
Cheese23.88kg CO₂e / kg
vs
Eggs4.67kg CO₂e / kg
Cheese or Eggs? Here's what each one costs the climate, measured per kilo over its whole life.
Cheese runs about 23.88 kg CO₂e a kilo. Eggs runs 4.67.
Cheese is the heavier choice, about 5.1× Eggs.
Swap Cheese for Eggs and you cut about 19.21 kg a kilo, near 80% off.
Per kilo, that gap is a 112 km drive in a diesel car.
Cheese: Same cows, same methane. Milk and cheese carry it in every glass and slice.
Eggs: Middling. Hens eat feed, but there's no methane belch, so eggs sit well below beef.
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.