Onions & leeks vs Tofu: carbon footprint
Onions & leeks or Tofu? Here's what each one costs the climate, measured per kilo over its whole life.
Onions & leeks runs about 0.5 kg CO₂e a kilo. Tofu runs 3.16.
Tofu is the heavier choice, about 6.3× Onions & leeks.
Swap Tofu for Onions & leeks and you cut about 2.66 kg a kilo, near 84% off.
Per kilo, that gap is a 16 km drive in a diesel car.
Onions & leeks: About as low as food goes. Mostly the farming and getting it to the shelf.
Tofu: Tofu and soy milk hand you protein at a fraction of beef's footprint. The swap that actually moves the needle.
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.