[OKC] From Slate's Green Lantern: Can fun-size candy bars be good for the environment?

[Miles, Karen]

For Halloween this year, I got a big bowl, filled up half with candy,
filled up the other half with toys from Happy Meals I had saved, and
gave trick-or-treaters a choice.  Needless to say, the toys were a big
hit and word got around fast to other kids in the neighborhood!
 
the green lantern 

Black and Orange and Green


Can fun-size candy bars be good for the environment?

By Jacob Leibenluft
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2008, at 7:04 AM ET 
________________________________

Trick or treat! Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays,
and now my son is old enough to be excited about it, too. But lately
I've been feeling a little frightened by the environmental impact of all
those plastic bats and fun-size candy bars. What's a green
Halloween-lover to do?
Halloween may offer the Lantern a chance to dress up as his namesake
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Lantern> , but it doesn't provide
many other opportunities for the eco-conscious. Any holiday that
involves creating a ridiculous costume that you're going to wear exactly
once while you gorge on prepackaged junk food is not exactly tailor-made
for going green.
Let's start with the reason for the season: all that candy. Diets rich
in sugary foods are typically considered less eco-friendly than those
with modest amounts; in Sweden, for example, a model diet
<http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VP6-4DM4TCX-
1&_user=186797&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_version=1&_url
Version=0&_userid=186797&md5=fdef983862a4f37e5b6772ecac4a5b77>  crafted
by a team of environmental scientists suggested consumers cut down on
sweets by about 50 percent. A British report
<http://www.fcrn.org.uk/frcnResearch/publications/PDFs/CuaS_web.pdf>
(PDF) called that recommendation a "medium" priority for greening our
food choices. (One risk, the report noted, was attracting accusations of
"nanny state misery-guts spoilsportism"-a pretty good description of how
people react if someone tries to take away their candy.) 
Do sweets deserve such a bad rap? In total, the National Confectioners
Association projects at least $2.2 billion worth of candy will be sold
this Halloween season-and that's a low estimate, including only what's
specifically marketed for the holiday. That means a lot of extra,
nonrecyclable packaging for all those fun-size candy bars. It also means
millions of pounds of cocoa and corn syrup that needs to be farmed,
processed, and shipped. (Now, if you eat candy instead of dinner on Oct.
31, you may be replacing calories from other sources-so you can subtract
that from your Halloween toll. But the Lantern guesses that many
Halloween candy binges involve a few extra calories, too.)
To take a specific example, consider the Cadbury Dairy Milk bar-which
received a "carbon audit" by the British-based organization Carbon
Trust. According to the analysis, a 49-gram chocolate bar has a carbon
footprint of about 169 grams
<http://www.foodmanufacture.co.uk/news/fullstory.php/aid/5994/Cadbury_fu
rthers_carbon_footprint_debate.html> -a ratio of 3.45 grams of CO2 for
every gram of chocolate. That ratio stacks up pretty well compared with
meat but is a good deal worse than most fruits and vegetables or bread.
Digging down, one interesting result is that the milk used in the candy
bar turns out to be by far the largest component of its carbon
footprint-suggesting that dark chocolate may be an environmentally
friendlier choice. 
But other ingredients in candy create other concerns. Corn syrup-that
now-ubiquitous sweetener that is a major ingredient in many candies-has
been criticized
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/06/AR20080
30603294.html>  as the product of subsidized "monoculture" farming that
wreaks havoc on the land. Cocoa presents another problem. Like coffee,
cocoa flourishes in many of the world's biodiversity "hot spots"; as a
result, cocoa cultivation has resulted in the destruction of millions of
acres
<http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/policy/agriculture_environmen
t/commodities/cocoa/environmental_impacts/index.cfm>  of environmentally
fragile rainforest. Still, there's a flip side: In Brazil, some
environmentalists-and chocolate manufacturers-argue that more
eco-friendly cocoa cultivation techniques may offer the best hope
<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16354380>  of
encouraging local farmers to save the rainforest. The hope is that as
the market for carbon credits expands, cocoa farmers might be paid both
for their crops and for the carbon sequestered
<http://nationalzoo.si.edu/ConservationAndScience/MigratoryBirds/Researc
h/Cacao/newmark.cfm>  by the surrounding forest-creating an incentive
against deforestation. In general, the big candy manufacturers have
begun placing a greater emphasis on sustainable cocoa farming-if for no
other reason than to ensure that the world's cocoa supply doesn't
disappear due to overproduction
<http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/07/06/eco.chocolate/index.htm
l> .
So, how do you make a greener Halloween? 
Article continues at: http://www.slate.com/id/2203154/
 
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