The Carbon Footprint Of A Sandwich

Follow the path of a BLT from field to plate.

↓↓ Links & Info ↓↓

Credits:
Senior Editors: Andrea Kissack
Supervising Editor: Anne Gudenkauf

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use for further information.


Music Credit:
"Bounce," Eugene Bezodis & Patrick Dawes / ZFC Music

timbre
123jorre456
audible-edge
kyster
robinhood76
iamyorgos
sethroph
tjandrasounds
inspectorj
meggiepie
jarredgibb
tran5ient
planman
frankelmedico
owlstorm
megashroom
squareal
theneedle-tv
sethroph
robinhood76
nmscher
jarredgibb
owlstorm
jamesgilsenan
razzvio
jamesgilsenan
wescwave
q-k
lzmraul
justiiiiin
xdimebagx
noisecollector
volivieri
pureaudioninja
temawas
splicesound
psychopancake
braleven
kuoshu
aliedsvwyk
everheat
eneasz
delphidebrain
spanrucker
razzvio
123jorre456
motion-s
worthahep88
benboncan
semccab
sethroph
jberkuta14
omar-alvarado
sophiehall3535
worthahep88
faulkin
otisjames
yottasounds
metamorphmuses
spenc3r
soundmary
edsward
kwahmah-02

[Swordonator]

My teacher is making us seriously go through and find how much 1 slice of bread takes

[doxielain]

I love your cheerful patience in creating these videos and in your dealing with the comments section. Huzzah!

[waownou]

Beautiful production! Plus the way the message is conveyed is much more hopeful than all the others stressing the carbon footprint. Job well done!

[ozblokeempty]

Really puts things into perspective. I think you should also add a very small hint type of thing a the end how people could offset this. Going solar would be the obvious deal for the laptop or computer (and every other electrical device people have at home), just tips like that would be great to not only make people aware, but to educate them on the "how to" change if they want to apply it.

[meganrjones_]

Aww this one made me sad😢 and I’m watching this right before I’m going to sleep I’ll be thinking about this all night long🤦🏽‍♀️

[kingkasper]

1 colab w/ vsauce, veritassium, the king of random, or smarter every day and this channel would skyrocket!!!

[smlzbcz]

HELP MY TEACHER FORCED ME TO WATCH THIS ACTUALLY GOOD VIDEO

[maxximumb]

But what about the carbon taken from carbon dioxide as the wheat, sugar, tomato and lettuce grow. Pretty much all the carbon in there is from CO2 in the air. Plus the plants that fed the pigs are made from CO2.
Two slices of bread contain 3 x 10^25 carbon atoms in the form of carbohydrates. That's a lot of carbon taken from the atmosphere. You didn't tell your audience one rather important fact. Plants spend most of their growing time, taking in CO2, splitting off the carbon, making more plant cells with the carbon and releasing the oxygen. Remember that most of the whole plant is carbon and water. So to produce the 30, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 atoms of carbon in the bread, you need all the other parts of the wheat plant too. That's a lot more carbon dioxide than just the carbon atoms tied up in the seeds, the bit we eat.
I appreciate that the point of the video was to make people think about the carbon used to make food, but only telling half the story is as bad as the climate change deniers ignoring facts to support their case.

[lisainglese]

I love the production of these videos!

[jenniferkaden]

Interesting that almost the entire 3 minutes are spent detailing the creation of the bread, yet merely 10 seconds on the carbon footprint of 4 strips of bacon, which FAR exceeds every other ingredient of the BLT. Even had to drastically compress the units of the graph just to fit the carbon from bacon into it. Replacing the flesh of a pig's belly with tempeh in this sandwich seems like an obvious answer to drastically reduce its environmental impact. Considering so few people understand the enormous impact of animal agriculture, emphasis on this most damaging ingredient would have been incredibly useful for educating the public. For those interested in learning why animal agriculture is largely absent from discussions about environmental and health solutions, check out the films COWSPIRACY and WHAT THE HEALTH... both on Netflix.

[alexanderrosen]

1:35 grind into flour (with a hand crank)

[FaunoDufaux]

thanks for being honest and not being afraid of stepping on the meat industries toes a little

[toh_amphibia_lover]

My teacher is making me watch this for an assignment

[UnPuntoCircular]

WHAT HAPPENED WITH THE FANTASTIC INTRO!?!?! PLEASE BRING IT BACK! :D

[dakotastevens]

This helped with my assignment so much

[kocajj]

Great video. A bit shorter than the normal one, but it quickly got the point across. It would also be great to see a video of water usage as many parts of the world already are and are becoming more arid.

[teamaftermath]

I love this video. I can show this now when I come across someone who thinks it’s easy to change the world in just a few steps now know what goes on behind the scenes so to speak.

[patouxb]

Great video. However, you were able to give a number of g of CO2 of your BLT sandwich. Could you maybe compare it with a vegetarian and a vegan sandwich? Basically throwing in some eggs instead of bacon for vegetarian, and replacing that again with something of a vegan sandwich with proteins (no idea what one could use for that unfortunately, I'm not a sandwich guy).
Would help people understand the impact of meat! (Which may, or may not be the goal of your video).

[MHH]

I really want to be more green. I care, I really do. I bicycle commute and eliminated one car, etc, but this is not even close to science.

All that transport is far more efficient than portrayed. In fact, the whole buy local movement is a good idea, but based on bad science. Every trip mentioned in this video is more efficient than portrayed because it is like car pooling. Because it is moved in mass, it is more energy efficient than hundreds of locals growing and moving the same amount locally.

Modern trucks and tractors are far more energy efficient than portrayed. This is especially true of tractors that now actually reburn fuel for both efficiencies and emissions that rival electricity (except in the production of the fossil fuel). They are years, perhaps decades, ahead of automotive. They are still a long way behind the efficiencies of moving these products by rail and barge.

indeed, meat production is not efficient compared to plants. Aside from eliminating, or to drastically reduce our meat consumption (possibly a more worthy topic), large scale operatioms, that require transport, are still more environmentally friendly than lots of near local producers doing it in a small scale.
I prefer local meat produced in a more humane and less chemically enhanced manner, but that has more to do with regulation than location.

The only way for this video to make sense would be to turn back large swathes of land in and around all of our communities, to farm production. I could live with no suburbs or individual housing. I doubt most of the world would agree.

[xdnewsman]

It created JERBS for WIMIN?! xD. Cool story, thank you. Honestly I clicked it just because I thought "come on, how do you make this interesting" - so surprised. Really had fun watching this :). Super high quality stuff. Thank you.