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Calculation of the CO2 rucksacks of imported versus regionally produced goods.
The study „CO2 emissions of transport of selected food products” was commissioned by Agrarmarkt Austria.
The objective of this project was to illustrate the intensity of environmental impacts of selected goods by means of a selected indicator, the so-called CO2 rucksack. The CO2-rucksack was calculated as the freight transport-related emission of CO2. In each case, imported products were compared with a regionally produced food product.
The following product pairs were investigated:
* Apples (South Africa vs. Styria)
* Strawberries (Spain vs. Lower Austria)
* Grapes (Chile vs. Burgenland)
* Tomatoes (Netherlands vs. Vienna)
* Pepper (Israel vs. Lower Austria)
* Cheese (France vs. Lower Austria)
* Butter (Ireland vs. Lower Austria)
* Yoghurt (Germany vs. Lower Austria)
* Beef (Argentina vs. Upper Austria)
The results of the calculations illustrate that for all nine examples considerable differences of transport-related CO2 emissions can be observed. Depending on the land of origin of the product imported from abroad as well as the assumptions made with regard to the domestically produced comparison-product, the difference is between the factor 3 (the yoghurt from Germany instead of the province of Lower Austria) and the factor 838 (the grapes from Chile instead of the province of Burgenland).
Download of summary calculation sheet here.
The results were presented in a press conference with the Austrian minister for agriculture and environment Josef Pröll (see German version of the webpage for details).
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