Carbon Footprint

What’s your carbon footprint? We all have one! 

Your carbon footprint is carbon that has been left in the air by you but you can’t see it. 


We did our own carbon footprint quiz and then we looked at how the food we buy and eat or throw out effects our carbon footprint. 


We examined the food pyramid and gave each item a mark out of 10. Why do we buy food with a high carbon footprint that that can’t be produced locally? Possibly because it’s good for you or possibly just because we like it.

Then we headed to the Supermarket to figure out:

What exactly are “food miles'' and what is the environmental impact of packaging?

Here are some of the questions we asked

  • Is it local or has it come from the other side of the world?
  • If it's not local, then how far has our food travelled from its source to our plates?
  • Are local or environmentally friendly products more expensive? 

Here’s an example of near identical packaging but one is 100% compostable but the other is plastic.

  • How is produce packaged?
  • Is it packaged in hard or soft plastic, cardboard, glass, metal, paper or a mixture?
  • Could there be less packaging and could it be more environmentally friendly?


Then we tried out our Our Supermarket Experiment to find out how much unprocessed, fresh and locally produced foods we could buy with €1 with no packaging or only compostable packaging.

We discovered the true environmental impact of food and packaging!

Supermarket Letters

Are Supermarkets doing enough to reduce plastic packaging?

It is estimated Irish retailers produce 80,000 tonnes of plastic waste every year. Ireland is one of the largest users of plastics in the European Union.

Globally, more than 110 million tonnes of plastic is produced each year, and only half of it is ever recycled. The rest ends up in landfill, in flames or in our seas.

Did you know the average time for a plastic bottle to completely degrade is at least 450 years!

We need Supermarkets to reduce their plastic packaging. 


Letter to Aldi and their Response

We wrote to some of the local supermarkets to see what they are doing to help the environment.

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