Cheese vs Rice: carbon footprint
Cheese23.88kg CO₂e / kg
vs
Rice4.45kg CO₂e / kg
Cheese or Rice? Here's what each one costs the climate, measured per kilo over its whole life.
Cheese runs about 23.88 kg CO₂e a kilo. Rice runs 4.45.
Cheese is the heavier choice, about 5.4× Rice.
Swap Cheese for Rice and you cut about 19.43 kg a kilo, near 81% off.
Per kilo, that gap is a 114 km drive in a diesel car.
Cheese: Same cows, same methane. Milk and cheese carry it in every glass and slice.
Rice: Modest. Fertiliser, the field itself, and a bit of milling.
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.