• I wasn’t trying to be particularly green today. In fact I tried to choose foods that I felt were the typical types of things a busy North American would buy.
• In general I don’t really have any idea where most of my food comes from.
• Packaging was a part of oil consumption of my food. I tended to eat a lot of foods today that were packaged in a way that likely consumed fossil fuels during their production.
• Ingredients in even my most innocuous items for the day were wildly separated geographically.  I literally consumed items produced in all areas of the planet.
• There was a surprising lack of information on products and their websites as to where exactly the foods and their ingredients exactly came from. I found myself guessing a lot about where items originated.
• It’s quite hard to pin down an exact carbon foodprint of your food use unless you only buy locally produced food. There are many factors which I felt difficult to fully include in my assessment.

1. http://www.klamathsustainablecommunities.org/articles/transp/UKfreightTransportCO2Emissions.pdf

Had this bar for a snack in the evening. I had picked it up at MEC earlier in the day as I was getting camping supplies. It says it is 70% organic and made in the USA. It is presumably grown in the United States and then shipped up to Canada via truck.

The packaging is minimal but still produces waste. It is a thin coated mylar packaging.

For dinner I purchased a frozen pizza from Save-on-foods. I walked to the store so I did not consume any fuel myself on the trip.

The product was made in Germany which I thought to be very interesting. There is ham, which likely is European in origin and cheese which is likely also European. However, the pineapple likely came from a great distance. The top producing countries are Philippines, Thailand, and Costa Rica (1) So likely the pineapple traveled, likely via boat, across the world to Germany and then the pizza traveled again across the world to get to my table.

The packaging isn’t great. You can recycle the outer cardboard shell, however, there is also a cardboard pad, parchment and plastic wrap on the inside.

For a drink I had chilled tap water. No packaging and I used a reusable glass.

1. http://www.whichcountry.co/top-10-pineapple-producing-countries-in-the-world/

For an afternoon drink I had a pomegranate coconut water. As indicated on the can, the product in manufactured in Thailand.  Presumably it was shipped via cargo ship from Thailand to likely Vancouver (as it has the major west coast port in Canada).

From Thailand to vancouver is about 7174 nautical miles and which would take about 30 days at sea (1). Fuel consumption would likely be up to a couple hundred kilometers of truck travel, or possibly rail, within Thailand and Canada as well as about 150 tons of fuel per day on the container ship (2). It’s hard to calculate exactly what percentage would be on this single can.

Packaging is a single recyclable Aluminum can. This is actually a very good packaging choice for this product. It only takes 5% of the energy to recycle an aluminum can than produce a new one. it also creates 97% less water pollution than producing new metal from ore. (4) This is by far the most recyclable packaging of a project I’ve had today.

1. http://sea-distances.com/
2. http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch8en/conc8en/fuel_consumption_containerships.html
3. http://www.cancentral.com/funfacts.cfm

For lunch I went to Tim Hortons on campus and ordered the following:

• Medium ice capp
• Large ham and Swiss on whole wheat bread
• Coconut donut

The ham and Swiss sandwich contained ham, Swiss cheese, lettuce, and tomato. Packaging included paper and waxed paper. The tomato and lettuce could be grown locally, or on the other side of the country. It is even possible that it was grown locally, shipped to Ontario, and then shipped back! It isn’t clear.

The ice capp came in a plastic cup with a plastic straw. The plastic straw had a paper wrapper. It presumably contained coffee made from coffee beans as well as cream and sugar. Thus there is direct petroleum used in the plastic packaging. Tim Horton’s uses a blend of beans that typically comes from a variety of South American countries (4). The coffee beans would have been shipped via cargo ship from South America and then truck within Canada. The cream and sugar was likely within Canada and required truck or rail transport to get to distributor. Sugar would be similar to the information quoted in my breakfast post.

The donut came in a paper bag and likely contains coconut, wheat, sugar, salt, milk, flour, margarine, and eggs. These products could be from a variety of places, but the coconut and sugar would be the most remote. The rest of the ingredients could likely have been produced within the Canadian prairies.

Tim Horton’s used to bake their donuts in house, but not they are baked at Maidstone Bakeries in Brantford, Ont (1). I was unable to find out if any supplies are sourced locally. From google maps I was able to determine that the trucks would have to drive about 4400 km between Brampton and Vancouver. Tim Horton’s has increased its fuel efficiency of its fleet vehicles by 9.2% since 2008 (2). I was unable to find any more detailed information about the exact fuel efficiency for their fleet. From this (3) fuel efficiency of semi trucks seems to vary between 4 and 9 mpg. Let’s use 6mpg as a rough estimate and assume that all goods are delivered from Ontario (like the donuts.) In km/l this is 2.55 km/l.  This translates to 1724L of diesel to transport a full load across country.

Electricity, for the most part, in BC is hyroelectric. So the local restaurant itself did not contribute significantly to the oil consumed by the meal.

1. http://www.thestar.com/business/2010/08/12/tim_hortons_plans_to_return_475_million_from_maidstone_sale_to_shareholders.html
2. http://www.go-green.ae/greenstory_view.php?storyid=2294
3. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_average_fuel_mileage_for_semi_trucks_in_the_U.S.A.
4. http://makegoodcoffee.com/coffee-talk/where-does-tim-hortons-coffee-come-from/

For my breakfast I had some Save-on brand Crunchy Granola with Dairyland Milk. The Crunchy Granola was listed as being prepared in Vancouver– which makes the distance we are dealing with a lot shorter. The main ingredients included things which could theoretically be grown locally or within a province– such as raspberries and blueberries. The whole grain oats and flour used in the cereal likely came from the prairies. Such ingredients likely arrived via rail car where it was baked in Vancouver. This is a relatively efficient way to ship goods, but still uses fossil fuels.

The sugar used in the cereal could come from either far abroad. Typically South America, Central America, or Australia. It could also come from sugar beet in Alberta(1). There was no indication on the package as to where the sugar came from.

Dairyland Milk, headquarted in Quebec (indicated on packaging), did not indicate what province the milk was produced in so it theoretically could be coming as far as Quebec– nearly 4500 km away! This is similar in fuel consumption to my Tim Horton’s I had for lunch later in the day.

Both included paper based packaging– which could have come from local forests in BC– as well as waxed paper based waterproofing and a plastic bag to hold the cereal. The waxed paper and plastic bag are direct petroleum products.

1. http://www.sugar.ca/english/canadiansugarindustry/industrystatistics.cfm