Chocolate is delicious, but not for the planet
As we know, red meat production, overfishing and intensive farming are the scourges of the food sector. But did you know that chocolate production is also part of these big polluting industries? Indeed, chocolate is the non-animal product that has the largest carbon footprint in the food sector.
There is 9.35 kg of CO2 emitted during the production of 1 kg of dark chocolate. That’s more than the production of pork or coffee, which makes the chocolate sector the 4th most polluting product behind beef, lamb and cheese production.
🌳 How does chocolate present an ecological problem?
Ecological footprint of cocoa production is largely driven by farming (14,3%), losses (27,7%) and packaging (1,5%). But the activity that is most responsible for the ecological disaster of the chocolate industry is the change of the land being farmed. This represents 55.3% of the environmental impact of the industry.
Ivory Coast, which is the world’s largest cocoa producer with nearly 1.5 million cubic tons extracted each year, is experiencing a real ecological disaster. The country has lost more than 80% of its forests in half a century.
By overexploiting its cultivation lands, the chocolate industry largely destroys the soils used. In addition, the large companies in the sector lack control over the exploitation of the land due to the lack of traceability of the production coming from poor farmers who have small exploitation sites and who do not have sufficient resources to provide information on the practices of exploitation of the land and therefore deforestation.
To make matters worse, these practices increase the spread of disease between cocoa beans — 30% of plants are lost to disease each year. Unfortunately, it is not possible to move these plants to other regions of the world other than those already exploited. This is because cocoa plants can only grow in a narrow band around the equator.
🍫 What is at stake?
What could be better than being in the capital of Europe and the country of chocolate to create an innovative way of consuming chocolate when we know that 45% of the world market share is held in Europe.
A market that is all the more polluting when we note that 82% of the chocolate sold is a “everyday” product and that 70.7% of the chocolate sold is the one with the largest ecological footprint: the dark chocolate.
We could count on technological, R&D and entrepreneurial resources to develop creative solutions such as:
- Proposing creative solutions to conserve or restore endangered forests.
- Diversification of incomes in the producing countries
- Grow more cocoa on less land
- Motivate brands to have control over their supply chain and get rid of intermediaries.
Solving these ecological problems related to cocoa cultivation would also solve serious social problems. Among these, we count the fact that between 3 and 4 million farmers are not paid enough to feed themselves. In addition, the cultivation involves a lot of young child workers.
It is therefore necessary to establish a CEA (Controlled Environment Agriculture) type of cocoa farming that is more careful about the working conditions of its workers.
💡 Innovative Ideas
Several companies and startups are already working on innovative ideas and products to revolutionize the chocolate market:
- Cargill (one of the world’s leading chocolate and cocoa companies) has signed a partnership with Aerofarms to develop an innovative way of growing beans through hydroponics and aeroponics, two methods that do not require the use of land.
- WNWN and Planet Foods replaced cocoa beans using fermentation techniques
- Omaiko replaces cocoa beans with spirulina, an algae that tastes like cocoa.
- Atomo develops cocoa bean cells in laboratories
Meanwhile, the European Union recently passed a new law to prevent companies from selling commodities like coffee, beef, and soy into the EU market if they are linked to deforestation. And as legislation on sustainable ingredients comes into force, and consumer awareness of the chocolate supply chain and its environmental impact increases, it will become sooner or later on the top of the agenda.
Changing the chocolate industry is an ambitious goal, but let’s not forget when we thought about replacing cow milk with plant-based milk. As Mandela once said: “It always seems impossible until it’s done”.
At BeeFounders, we are convinced that there is huge potential to create cocoa-free chocolate that tastes and melts just like the real thing. This would be a win-win for consumers, workers, producers, and the planet. 🌱
