What I eat

Food has a massive impact on the environment

It's responsible for between 10% and 30% of your household’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Five ways to reduce your food carbon footprint

• waste less - only buy what you need in the first place
• choose unprocessed foods - highly processed foods usually have a bigger carbon footprint
• grow your own vegetables - this can be fun to do if you have a garden or allotment
• buy locally - if the food is locally produced, this cuts virtually all transport-related emissions. Explore local markets on our events page
• check the labels on fruit and veg - to see how far they’ve travelled

Do you know the carbon footprint of the food you eat? Check out this calculator on the BBC website.

What's your food’s carbon footprint?

Food facts

The way we grow, process and transport food is a major contributor to climate change. Mass removal of trees to accommodate agricultural farming really isn’t helping our planet, as removing trees reduces how much greenhouse gas can be taken out of the atmosphere. 

Here are some hard-hitting facts you might not realise when you make your food choices from the World Economic Forum:

• Almost 50% of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture.
• Around 75% of that agricultural land is used to farm and feed animals
• Nearly all the land used for animal grazing and feed is for cows and sheep!

One of the best ways to lower the carbon footprint of your food is to cut down on meat and dairy products. Switching food choices from beef, lamb and dairy for other food (e.g. fish, chicken and plants) could reduce agricultural land use from 4.2 billion hectares to around 1.1 billion hectares!

So, would it be more sustainable and better for the environment if we all switched to a diet with more fruit and veg? Yes but, unfortunately, it’s not that simple.

Not all plant-based foods are equal in terms of their carbon impact 
It depends on where they come from and how they get to your plate

The difference is from the extra carbon emissions involved in growing and transporting fruit and vegetables, such as avocados. Your avocados probably had to travel thousands of miles from central or southern America. Although, bear in mind that an avocado still has a much lower carbon footprint than its equivalent weight in meat!

The table below compares the carbon footprint of different foods based on their carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions per kilogram.

Sources: CO2 of Everything, Statista, Guardian.