Carbon Neutrality

I may be stepping on the toes of the “You Are What You Eat” group, but after sitting in on a presentation during yesterday’s SURF day, I knew I had to write a blog post about it. The presentation was called “Quantifying the Carbon and Pesticide Footprints of Elon University’s Dining Services.” It was all about how what we eat on campus and how we get it here is adding to the carbon emissions in our environment.

Elon University plans to achieve a goal of total carbon neutrality by 2037. They worked with the ARAMARK, FreshPoint, and CA-CP companies to calculate how much carbon emissions we at Elon University are making. All the data was estimated, but it still gave an accurate account of how much. They found that we use an average yield of 1762 kgCO2/acre/year for each commodity used. Also, they took the number of tons of food traveled multiplied by number of miles traveled multiplied by a constant (0.3725 lbsCO2/ton-mi). This is how much carbon emissions we let off during transportation.

They discovered that we have many international distributors because we eat foods that are not in season. Our most used product is potato. This is because fries are the most eaten food on campus. They said we could switch to sweet potatoes, a locally grown product, but because they are grown by small farming companies they would not be able to provide us with the quantity we need. They also found that lettuce let off the most emissions. Imagine, the produce that seems like it would be the freshest is the source of the most carbon emissions.

At the end of the presentation they gave suggestions for what we can do to reduce the emissions and make Elon reach its goal. These include buying local products and only buy what is in season. For those foods that are out of season, buy them when they are in season and store them until fall. These speakers have presented their plan to Elon’s sustainability coordinator to propose buying food that is grown closer to the university.

What do you think of this plan? Do you think Elon will reach its goal of carbon neutrality by 2037?

jenna ambrosi