Farmed shrimp vs Tofu: carbon footprint
Farmed shrimp or Tofu? Here's what each one costs the climate, measured per kilo over its whole life.
Farmed shrimp runs about 26.87 kg CO₂e a kilo. Tofu runs 3.16.
Farmed shrimp is the heavier choice, about 8.5× Tofu.
Swap Farmed shrimp for Tofu and you cut about 23.71 kg a kilo, near 88% off.
Per kilo, that gap is a 139 km drive in a diesel car.
Farmed shrimp: Farmed fish and shrimp pay for feed, energy to run the ponds, and sometimes cleared mangroves.
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.