Category: Resources

Chocolate’s Carbon Footprint

A carbon footprint is the amount of greenhouse gases released into the air when we use energy – to cook food, ride a bus or watch TV. Each person makes about 4 tons of carbon per year just going about their daily lives. Imagine how much more energy a farm or factory uses! 

Carbon Footprint 

A carbon footprint is the amount of greenhouse gases released into the air when we use energy – to cook food, ride a bus or watch TV. Each person makes about 4 tons of carbon per year just going about their daily lives. 

Imagine how much more energy a farm or factory uses! 

Chocolate’s Carbon Footprint 

Chocolate has one of the highest carbon footprints of plant-based foods in the world. 

Chocolate takes more energy to produce than coffee, pork, or chicken. The cocoa industry makes over 2 million tons of greenhouse gases per year.  

Deforestation

To make room for more cacao farms, thousands of acres of rainforest have been cleared.  

Rainforests trap carbon. But when the trees are cut down, this carbon is released as carbon dioxide and adds to global warming. Animals also lose their habitats. 

Farming

Up to 40% of a cacao crop is lost every year to disease. Farmers often overuse pesticides or fertilizer. This pollutes the water and soil, and creates an unhealthy environment for the locals and wildlife.  

One healthy cacao tree produces enough beans to make only 10 regular size (1.5 ounces) chocolate bars per year! 

Water 

Cacao trees require lots of water. It takes almost 30,000 quarts to make two pounds of cocoa beans. About 10,000 quarts are used just to transport and store these two pounds of beans on their long overseas journey to a factory. That’s a huge water footprint! 

Transportation 

Cacao beans travel thousands of miles before chocolate-making can begin. Bags of beans get to port by truck. There they are loaded onto ships and sail from the Cocoa Belt to factories mainly in Europe and the US

Manufacturing 

Cacao then goes through a long process of roasting, grinding, and blending before it’s poured into blocks and sent to chocolate companies and bakeries.  

Other ingredients in chocolate production increase the carbon footprint such as milk powder, sugar, and palm oil to make milk chocolate. Rain forests are cut down to make palm oil farms, and dairy cows make methane gas. Dark chocolate uses more cocoa and cocoa butter, which means it needs more beans. 

Packaging 

Chocolate uses more plastic in its packaging than other foods. Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, and Halloween all have their own wrappings.  

People give boxes of chocolates as gifts. Bite-sized chocolates are often wrapped in foil or placed inside a plastic tray in a fancy box tied with a bow. This wrapping is not recyclable and ends up in the landfill. 

Is Child Labor in Your Chocolate?

Chocolate is a thriving business, and big companies make a lot of money selling it. The chocolate industry is worth a whopping 135 billion dollars, and it continues to grow. However, as these big companies continue to gain bigger market shares and higher profits, millions of cacao farmers bear the costs.

Chocolate is a thriving business, and big companies make a lot of money selling it. The chocolate industry is worth a whopping 135 billion dollars, and it continues to grow. However, as these big companies continue to gain bigger market shares and higher profits, millions of cacao farmers bear the costs––earning less and less each year, well below the international poverty line. 

Cacao doesn’t grow just anywhere. The trees need hot, humid climates. That’s one reason that nearly 70% cacao trees are grown in West African countries. However, most of the money is earned after the beans leave the farmers and only when they reach the Global North, where the beans are processed and made into chocolate as we know it.  

Back on the cacao farms, farmers and their workers scrape by with an average income of less than $1.25 a day. The disparity is shocking. Cacao farmers in Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) and Ghana alone make 60% of the world’s cocoa but earn only 3-6% of its retail value. 

On this amount, they cannot afford the basic necessities. They have little food, water or shelter. They cannot afford to send their children to school and are often forced to send them to work on cacao farms for another source of income. They work to survive, and their families depend on it.  

Unfortunately, the industry takes advantage of the situation. Much of the cacao harvested for mass-produced chocolate from major companies is often done by young teens and children. In fact, as many as 1.56 million children are estimated to be working on cacao farms in West African countries.  

Cacao farming is a challenging labor-intensive process. The fruit is cut straight from the branch with a sharp blade. Then it is cracked open with a machete or a wooden mallet so that the cacao beans can be scooped out. Imagine a child doing such dangerous work! On top of that, they are exposed to chemicals daily. 

Even if conditions were safe, child labor exploits children. They can’t attend school, and they are subject to abuse, injury, malnutrition, and exhaustion as farm workers.  

We should never tolerate child labor so that the rest of the world can have cheap chocolate. But what can we do to hold the chocolate industry accountable? We can start by paying a little more for a bar of chocolate.