Coffee vs Rice: carbon footprint
Coffee28.53kg CO₂e / kg
vs
Rice4.45kg CO₂e / kg
Coffee or Rice? Here's what each one costs the climate, measured per kilo over its whole life.
Coffee runs about 28.53 kg CO₂e a kilo. Rice runs 4.45.
Coffee is the heavier choice, about 6.4× Rice.
Swap Coffee for Rice and you cut about 24.08 kg a kilo, near 84% off.
Per kilo, that gap is a 141 km drive in a diesel car.
Coffee: Comes from growing and processing the crop, plus whatever it ships in.
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.