Coffee vs Eggs: carbon footprint

Coffee28.53kg CO₂e / kg
vs
Eggs4.67kg CO₂e / kg

Coffee or Eggs? Here's what each one costs the climate, measured per kilo over its whole life.

Coffee runs about 28.53 kg CO₂e a kilo. Eggs runs 4.67.

Coffee is the heavier choice, about 6.1× Eggs.

Swap Coffee for Eggs and you cut about 23.86 kg a kilo, near 84% off.

Per kilo, that gap is a 140 km drive in a diesel car.

Coffee: Comes from growing and processing the crop, plus whatever it ships in.

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.

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Figures from OWID / Poore & Nemecek 2018, licensed CC-BY 4.0.
How we get these numbers: Methodology.