Bordeaux by Boat

Tesco, Britain’s largest retailer, is working to develop a system of carbon labels for each of their 70,000 products. You might assume that you can easily calculate the carbon footprint of your favorite item by analyzing how far it might have traveled to land in your basket, but to really determine the carbon footprint you need to go further.

For example, if you live in New York, it would create less carbon emissions to drink Bordeaux instead of Californian wine. Although your Bordeaux is traveling from a further distance, it comes by boat, which creates less carbon output than the California wine which travels by truck.

For more information, check out Terri Gross' interview with Micheal Specter, a New Yorker Journalist who explains the idea of putting carbon footprint labels on our food. For a great article on the subject, read his story in the New Yorker, "Big Foot: In Measuring Carbon Emissions, it's Easy to Confuse Morality and Science".

Comments

[Joe]

This is another example of how complex "good" ideas can be. While diesel powered ships may use less fuel per pound of cargo than trucks, these consumers of very dirty fuel are the major source of air polution in the Los Angeles basin.
How about going one step further and using wind power (sail) for shipping across our oceans.

[Louise]

Many bottles of wine move across this country in containers, doubled stacked on railcars. My copmany, Pacer Stacktrain, pioneered the use of the special railcar that holds 2 containers. These trains can be a mile lone and are a great deal more efficient than a single truck. So, make sure the bottle of wine traveled by truck, before calculating the carbon footprint of same.

[Margie Campaigne]

Yes, the manufacturer of goods can calculate a carbon footprint, up to their delivery points, but then what? Perhaps the rest needs to be left to the hapless consumer. "How and how far did my XXX travel from the shipping yard to the store where I bought it?" (in person or online).

I do think we must consider the footprint of our purhcases, but some of it is going to be a gray area.

[Juliet Jones]

I just want to say, good for TESCO!

[Lisa]

This is what EAT LOCAL is all about. Even as I type I have a 5 gallon carboy of elderberry/blackberry wine fermenting by the wood stove. It may not be as good as "foreign" wines, but it's getting better with each batch. :^)

[Patricia]

while carbon is a concern, ships and ports are one of, if not the, highest sources of air pollutant in our country. The amounts of diesel particulate matter, and other toxic air pollutants emitted from cargo ships are extreme. In the past, emissions from ships have never been regulated, however, there is talk of congressional action to deal with this issue.

[Bill Thornton]

Not all California wine travels east by truck. I believe some bulk producers ship wine in tanker ships and bottle in the east. Of course this adds quite a bit to the shipping distance.

[Dr. Vino]

I collaborated on the research on the carbon footprint of wine that was cited in the New Yorker story. Feel free to add to the discussion there if you like.
http://drvino.com/2007/10/30/calculating-the-carbon-footprint-of-wine-my-research-findings/

@ Joe above, one shipper has now announced the shipment of wine from the Languedoc to Ireland on a 19th sailboat with an explicit mention of reducing the carbon footprint.

[Maureen Ehle]

I heartily support the buy local philosophy. Of course not everyone has access to good local wines. We here in Oregon have wonderful local wines grown and bottled within 10 miles of our home. Washington State also has top quality wines as do New York State, and California, of course. Making your own is a good idea too, if you can. We have a friend who makes his own and is very generous with it, so we are doubly blessed. We are also a major hops growing region, so local microbrews are very popular. I remember my mother-in-law's family used to make wonderful homemade fruit wines. The days of feeling that we had to have our food shipped to us came into fashion when refrigerated trucks were developed. Before that my Mother would go out to the local farms, buy bushels of fresh fruit and vegetables and can or freeze it during the summer for winter consumption. We would buy a portion of locally rasied and butchered beef and freeze it. I think it's time we went back to some of those old habits.
The Elderberry wine sounds great and Elderberry has anti-toxins that help build up your resistance to flu and other illnesses. You can get a quart or more of blueberries a day from a good blueberry bush planted in a very small garden.

[David]

Great Idea!
Now if we could get people to quit buying worthless disposable junk from China. Where the manufacturer could care less about the enviroment.
Imagine putting carbon footprint labels on every thing,and then teaching our children and our grandchildren about how important it is, it can be done.