Transport links of a strawberry yoghurt

 

Dear beeneters,

during our work on the subject "climate protection" we informed ourselves about the production of strawberry yoghurt and the distance that are covered, before such a yoghurt can be sold in a store. Especially the consequences for the climate were of interest for our work.

In the order to save money, for example a company in Stuttgart (Southwest Germany) buys the different ingredients and materials in different countries, depending on the prices. For example, the strawberries, that are bought in Poland, are transported to Aachen (west Germany) to be processed into fruit-pulp. Then the fruit-pulp is brought to the factory in Stuttgart, where it is mixed with the yoghurt. Even different sized cardboard-boxes are purchased at different companies, same as different labels and types of glue. The yoghurt company uses different types of glue, depending on whether it is needed to paste the labels onto the glasses, or whether it is used to close the cardboard-boxes.

When a truck drives one jar of strawberry yoghurt, covering a distance of one kilometre, the exhaust contains:

22,8 g of N2O

2 g of SO2 and

1,5 g of carcinogenic diesel emissions.

In western Germany nearly 900000 tons of fruit yoghurt are consumed in a year. That makes enormous figures for the distance of a kilometres. Assuming a load of 35 tons per truck, over 900000 tons of yoghurt require the stunning fleet of 25714 trucks. Their combined emission per kilometre comes up to:

586 kg/km N2O

51 kg/km SO2

38,5 kg/km carcinogenic diesel emissions

Not counted is the weight of the various packaging materials! Also consider this calculation is only made for the distance of one single kilometre!

The same goes for the raw materials travelling a total of 7695 km. The ingredients and packaging are brought to Stuttgart from different countries. But until they arrive, they will have travelled a long journey:

Milk : 36 km

Fruit pulp : 1246 km

Yoghurt cultures: 920 km

Sugar: 107 km

Glass: 746 km

Aluminium : 864 km

Label: 948 km

Cardboard: 1049 km

Stretchfoil : 406 km

Glue (labels): 639 km

Glue (cardboard): 734 km

Total : 7695 km

 


© 11b Gymnasium Harksheide, Norderstedt-Germany, April 15th ,1998