Speaker 1: Welcome to brain stuff from how stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Laurens vocal bomb here. Sure we all know people who
Speaker 1: prefer gummy bears, liquorice, or peanut brittle, but let's be honest,
Speaker 1: chocolate lovers outnumber those other weirdos by a significant margin.
Speaker 1: Chocolate is full of fat and sugar and laced with caffeine,
Speaker 1: but its sales have been steadily increasing in the United
Speaker 1: States over the past decade, even as overall candy sales
Speaker 1: have declined. The results of some recent studies have even
Speaker 1: implied that chocolate might be considered a health food with
Speaker 1: heavy scare quotes. But have you ever considered the environmental
Speaker 1: impact of that chocolate stash you have hidden in your
Speaker 1: desk drawer. Some researchers at the University of Manchester wondered
Speaker 1: about it, and so they calculated the carbon footprint of
Speaker 1: chocolate production in the United Kingdom by considering each element
Speaker 1: of chocolate production, from the individual ingredients, to the manufacturing
Speaker 1: processes to the packaging. When you consider its carbon footprint,
Speaker 1: chocolate has a dark side. The researchers focused on the
Speaker 1: three chocolate products that make up of the country's chocolate
Speaker 1: market individually sold milk, chocolate bars, sharing bags, and molded
Speaker 1: chocolate sold by weight. The research team calculated that the
Speaker 1: UK chocolate industry produces about two point three tons that's
Speaker 1: two point one metric tons of greenhouse gases each year,
Speaker 1: as much as would be produced by a city the
Speaker 1: size of Belfast, Ireland or El Paso, Texas. Perhaps more alarmingly,
Speaker 1: it takes about two hundred and sixty four gallons that's
Speaker 1: a thousand liters of water to produce a single chocolate bar.
Speaker 1: The research team took into consideration not only the transportation
Speaker 1: and production of raw materials necessary to manufacture chocolate, but
Speaker 1: also the energy and natural resources, transportation, distribution and storage,
Speaker 1: and post consumer waste involved in the process. Unsurprisingly, the
Speaker 1: researchers found that the most environmentally problematic chocolate products were
Speaker 1: these sharing bags large bags of individually wrapped candies, since
Speaker 1: their ingredients and excessive packaging carry larger carbon footprints. Of
Speaker 1: all the ingredients contained in chocolate, the cocoa, which is
Speaker 1: shipped to the UK from countries in West Africa and
Speaker 1: Central in South America, and the milk, the production of
Speaker 1: which is incredibly energy intensive, pack the most punch as
Speaker 1: far as greenhouse gas production is concerned. In a press release,
Speaker 1: the lead author of the study, Adiza as a Paget,
Speaker 1: head of Sustainable Industrial Systems at the University of Manchester, said,
Speaker 1: it is true that our love of chocolate has environmental
Speaker 1: consequences for the planet, but let's be clear, we aren't
Speaker 1: saying people should stop eating it. The point of this
Speaker 1: study is to raise consumers awareness and enable more informed choices. Also,
Speaker 1: we hope this work will help the chocolates industry to
Speaker 1: target environmental hotspots in the supply chains and make chocolate
Speaker 1: products as sustainable as possible. We hope so too. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was written by Jesseln Shields and produced by Tyler Clang.
Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other rich topics,
Speaker 1: visit our home planet, how stuff works dot com.