Food Miles and Carbon emissions
License to use Creative Commons Zero - CC0
Zonghao Hu
300172020
University of the Fraser Valley
This report attempts to calculate the Food Miles and Carbon emissions of random selection of
ten different foods (See Figure1). The experiment used the Distance Calculator from
timeanddate.com and Food Miles Calculator from Falls Brook Centre to calculate the amount of
carbon dioxide (in kilograms) emitted by transporting theses 10 foods (See Table 1).
Figure 1 Ten foods selected in this report (including: Calbee cereal, Windsor sea salt, Western Family pasta, Jamieson V.D, Vita
lemon tea, Quaker chewy, Tim Hortons green tee, Crisco Canola oil, no name eggs, white bread).
Table 1 Summary of the transport miles and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions with the various food items. Data from Distance
Calculator by timeanddate.com. The Food Miles Calculator by Falls Brook Centre.
The data mentioned in the report are limited due to the limited experimental conditions can not
provide specific distances and modalities for food transport. Also, Location of origin refers to the
place where the food is processed, the source of the raw material is not clear. For example, the
canola oil mentioned in the report is produced in the United States, but its raw materials come
from Canada. According to the survey, most of the food I store dilacerates from outside my area,
and even half of them come from countries outside Canada. From Table 1 we can see that
although some foods come from 10,000 kilometres away, the difference between the quality of it
carbon dioxide emitted by transport mainly use boat compare to 3,000 Km of transport by truck
is exceedingly small. This can be attributed to much less carbon dioxide emission by container
shipping than the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by truck. (See A comparison of Jamieson
V.D and Vita Lemon tee in Table I)
Overall, the ten foods I picked came from nearly far away, but that did not represent everyone.
But most of the food is transported more far away than I thought, and we should now start to
consider whether these transport distances are reasonable or not.