Dark chocolate vs Farmed shrimp: carbon footprint
Dark chocolate or Farmed shrimp? Here's what each one costs the climate, measured per kilo over its whole life.
Dark chocolate runs about 46.65 kg CO₂e a kilo. Farmed shrimp runs 26.87.
Dark chocolate is the heavier choice, about 1.7× Farmed shrimp.
Swap Dark chocolate for Farmed shrimp and you cut about 19.78 kg a kilo, near 42% off.
Per kilo, that gap is a 116 km drive in a diesel car.
Dark chocolate: Cocoa is tied to deforestation, so a chocolate bar hides a surprisingly heavy footprint.
Farmed shrimp: Farmed fish and shrimp pay for feed, energy to run the ponds, and sometimes cleared mangroves.
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.