Bin your burger - save the planet
I am indebted to Margaret of Eastbourne, a correspondent to Times Online on the subject of McDonalds’ unlikely success in France:
“Eating a burger a month produces the same carbon footprint as driving a Landrover 24000 miles”.
This comment was posted, along with others, including a couple of mine, in response to a story in The Times that the French have suddenly taken a liking to “le burger”. Seemingly, les grenouilles are flocking to the Golden Arch due to McDonald’s tarting up their “restaurants” so they are more like cafes and bistros, and also because they are using better quality ingredients than are foisted on other countries (Reblochon cheese on your burger, Monsieur?).
My take on this story is that you can’t polish a poo and that a fast food burger is as vile in France as it is in the UK, or anywhere else in the world. Indeed, the only redeeming feature of McDonald’s in France is that they have the decency to install proper toilets, the kind you sit on, rather than squat at. I find it hard to believe that a country that is supposedly as stylish and culturally advanced as France, still finds a hole in the ground an acceptable place to bare one’s buttocks. But that is not the point of my sermon today…
Let’s return to Margaret’s assertion: “Eating a burger a month produces the same carbon footprint as driving a Landrover 24000 miles”.
Since this was an off-hand post to an amusing online story, it is obviously scant in detail and even more so in fact, but as I have noted before, facts and details needn’t necessarily get in the way of a green scare story. So I tried to get inside Margaret’s mind and see if there is any shred of truth, since I am someone that likes to back up my words with a modicum of truth. Like the fact that the Green movement is all about making us miserable. Well, there is some truth in that…
The burger: A beef burger comes from a cow, which produces methane when it breaks wind and seemingly this is more of a source of evil than the exhaust of a car, so Margaret is on the right track there. The cow needs to be slaughtered and the meat processed, which requires infrastructure (and therefore power) and people (who drive to work – naughty, naughty), so that’s more carbons. The burger and its bun, relish and salad are packaged up in factories that use electricity and are staffed by people who drive to work. Then the meat has to be shipped to the outlet (more CO2) and sold in a restaurant that consumes lots of power, staffed by people who drive to work, or even if they use public transport, that transport does not run on air. Finally, the product is purchased by you and me, who drive to McDonald’s (those carbons are really racking up by now) and dispose of the packaging, which needs to be collected and disposed of, and doubtless that is not a carbon neutral activity. Also, all our breathing during the travel to and from the restaurant generates lots of CO2. And fatties, even more so.
So maybe there is a slither of truth in Margaret’s statement, but I bet I have applied more logic and reasoning to the argument than she ever did. Also, bear this in mind: the UK Met Office spends tens of millions of pounds on computers that supposedly predict the weather. And they get it wrong. Margaret and her ilk probably use sustainable ink to calculate their sums on a wattle and daub wall in their eco-home, or more likely Excel running on a Mac, which is a fraction of the computing power that Michael Fish has at his disposal. And he gets it wrong.
But even though it sounds like a lot of power is required to produce and sell a burger, remember that this needs to be divided amongst the millions of people who visit McDonald’s, Burger King and the like each day. Suddenly the CO2 figure per burger becomes a lot lower.
And I haven’t even started on the rest of her statement: which Landrover? A big one? A small one? One running on petrol? Diesel? LPG? How many occupants? Are the tyres pumped up correctly? Has it been serviced recently? Not easy, is it Margaret?
The final “fact”: 24,000 miles. Where did that come from? Is that supposed to be the average mileage of a driver? According to the Commission for Integrated Transport, the average UK driver covers under 10,000 miles per year, a lot less than 24k. Her figure appears to have been plucked from the recesses of a French pissoir.
So, all in all, Margaret’s argument is a little, shall we say, brittle. Scratch beneath the wafer-thin veneer – actually, it’s thinner than that; you would need an electron microscope to see how thin the veneer is – and the argument fails to hold.
But… let’s just humour our well-meaning hippie for a while. What if it were true that consuming burgers was 2.4 times worse than driving a Landrover (of unknown specification) for its average yearly mileage? That means I can offset my own 6,000 annual miles by giving up a ¼ of a burger. In fact, if I give up that fraction of a burger each month, I can have 12 years of conscience-free motoring. Now that’s what I call off-setting, and so much easier than paying someone to plant trees.
I’m off to McDonald’s now to suggest that they start making a 3/8 pounder and market it to drivers of large-engined vehicles who cover 6,000 miles per year. What a genius idea – a burger that offsets its own emissions. If I don’t post again, it’s because I’ve retired on the proceeds.
PS: Before the pedants write in, I know it’s “Land Rover” - I have a green and gold badge on the front of my car that says so. I was just quoting from our factually incorrect friend of the planet.
“Eating a burger a month produces the same carbon footprint as driving a Landrover 24000 miles”.
This comment was posted, along with others, including a couple of mine, in response to a story in The Times that the French have suddenly taken a liking to “le burger”. Seemingly, les grenouilles are flocking to the Golden Arch due to McDonald’s tarting up their “restaurants” so they are more like cafes and bistros, and also because they are using better quality ingredients than are foisted on other countries (Reblochon cheese on your burger, Monsieur?).
My take on this story is that you can’t polish a poo and that a fast food burger is as vile in France as it is in the UK, or anywhere else in the world. Indeed, the only redeeming feature of McDonald’s in France is that they have the decency to install proper toilets, the kind you sit on, rather than squat at. I find it hard to believe that a country that is supposedly as stylish and culturally advanced as France, still finds a hole in the ground an acceptable place to bare one’s buttocks. But that is not the point of my sermon today…
Let’s return to Margaret’s assertion: “Eating a burger a month produces the same carbon footprint as driving a Landrover 24000 miles”.
Since this was an off-hand post to an amusing online story, it is obviously scant in detail and even more so in fact, but as I have noted before, facts and details needn’t necessarily get in the way of a green scare story. So I tried to get inside Margaret’s mind and see if there is any shred of truth, since I am someone that likes to back up my words with a modicum of truth. Like the fact that the Green movement is all about making us miserable. Well, there is some truth in that…
The burger: A beef burger comes from a cow, which produces methane when it breaks wind and seemingly this is more of a source of evil than the exhaust of a car, so Margaret is on the right track there. The cow needs to be slaughtered and the meat processed, which requires infrastructure (and therefore power) and people (who drive to work – naughty, naughty), so that’s more carbons. The burger and its bun, relish and salad are packaged up in factories that use electricity and are staffed by people who drive to work. Then the meat has to be shipped to the outlet (more CO2) and sold in a restaurant that consumes lots of power, staffed by people who drive to work, or even if they use public transport, that transport does not run on air. Finally, the product is purchased by you and me, who drive to McDonald’s (those carbons are really racking up by now) and dispose of the packaging, which needs to be collected and disposed of, and doubtless that is not a carbon neutral activity. Also, all our breathing during the travel to and from the restaurant generates lots of CO2. And fatties, even more so.
So maybe there is a slither of truth in Margaret’s statement, but I bet I have applied more logic and reasoning to the argument than she ever did. Also, bear this in mind: the UK Met Office spends tens of millions of pounds on computers that supposedly predict the weather. And they get it wrong. Margaret and her ilk probably use sustainable ink to calculate their sums on a wattle and daub wall in their eco-home, or more likely Excel running on a Mac, which is a fraction of the computing power that Michael Fish has at his disposal. And he gets it wrong.
But even though it sounds like a lot of power is required to produce and sell a burger, remember that this needs to be divided amongst the millions of people who visit McDonald’s, Burger King and the like each day. Suddenly the CO2 figure per burger becomes a lot lower.
And I haven’t even started on the rest of her statement: which Landrover? A big one? A small one? One running on petrol? Diesel? LPG? How many occupants? Are the tyres pumped up correctly? Has it been serviced recently? Not easy, is it Margaret?
The final “fact”: 24,000 miles. Where did that come from? Is that supposed to be the average mileage of a driver? According to the Commission for Integrated Transport, the average UK driver covers under 10,000 miles per year, a lot less than 24k. Her figure appears to have been plucked from the recesses of a French pissoir.
So, all in all, Margaret’s argument is a little, shall we say, brittle. Scratch beneath the wafer-thin veneer – actually, it’s thinner than that; you would need an electron microscope to see how thin the veneer is – and the argument fails to hold.
But… let’s just humour our well-meaning hippie for a while. What if it were true that consuming burgers was 2.4 times worse than driving a Landrover (of unknown specification) for its average yearly mileage? That means I can offset my own 6,000 annual miles by giving up a ¼ of a burger. In fact, if I give up that fraction of a burger each month, I can have 12 years of conscience-free motoring. Now that’s what I call off-setting, and so much easier than paying someone to plant trees.
I’m off to McDonald’s now to suggest that they start making a 3/8 pounder and market it to drivers of large-engined vehicles who cover 6,000 miles per year. What a genius idea – a burger that offsets its own emissions. If I don’t post again, it’s because I’ve retired on the proceeds.
PS: Before the pedants write in, I know it’s “Land Rover” - I have a green and gold badge on the front of my car that says so. I was just quoting from our factually incorrect friend of the planet.
