Hey team, and welcome back to one5c! We’re firm believers that it’s OK to be imperfect when it comes to living sustainably, because giving yourself grace is a big part of what makes change accessible. Our stance on chocolate is a perfect example: Despite its large footprint, the answer is not to swear off it but rather to understand how to enjoy your sweet treats more responsibly.
Same goes for paper towels: You might not be able to rid yourself of quicker-picker-uppers entirely, but a good swap can go a long way to dialing back the habit. Today’s edition can help you do both. —Corinne
WHAT WE’RE INTO THIS WEEK
By Sara Kiley Watson
Retail therapy
The best Swedish dishcloth to end your love affair with paper towels
Americans are enamored with paper towels. In 2017, for example, we purchased half of the worldwide supply. There are plenty of alternatives to help ease our reliance on the kitchen and cleaning staple, from sponges to good ol’ rags. One favorite is the Swedish dishcloth. These cloths are basically rag-sponge-towel chimeras that are stiff when dry and soft when wet, so they’re able to soak up spills, attack stubborn messes, and handle other various paper towel-y tasks. A single one can also replace anywhere from 15 to 18 rolls of paper towels. We pitted five popular options against one another in head-to-head performance tests and weighed factors related to each one’s Earth-friendliness. Read our review to see which cloth cleaned up the competition and earned the title of best Swedish dishcloth.
Good read
The rise of the Sicilian mango
As the planet heats up, crops that typically thrive in certain regions just won’t be able to take the heat. Sicily’s iconic lemons, wine grapes, and olive trees, for example, struggle under droughts, wildfires, and emerging diseases. But there are opportunities among the chaos, namely for Sicilian farmers with a taste for the tropical. In her latest for Grist, food writer Ayurella Horn-Muller explores an upswing in mango farming along the Mediterranean. Acreage dedicated to the crop—which typically comes from Mexico, Brazil, and Peru—has ballooned over the past 20-or-so years from 24 acres to 3,000. This climate change–driven swap is definitely a warning sign, but it’s also a “beacon of resilience” for farmers worldwide.
Study guide
What’s cooking the ocean
As the planet warms, so does the ocean—which brings a myriad of complications for weather patterns, biodiversity, fisheries, and more. A new study in the journal Environmental Research Letters has zeroed in on what, exactly, has caused rapid warming in the deep. About 40 years ago, ocean temperatures were rising at around 0.06 degrees Celsius per decade, but now that rate has jumped to 0.27 degrees Celsius per decade. “If the oceans were a bathtub of water, then in the 1980s, the hot tap was running slowly, warming up the water by just a fraction of a degree each decade,” Chris Merchant, the study’s lead author, said in a release. “But now the hot tap is running much faster, and the warming has picked up speed.” The extra heat traces back to an “energy imbalance” on Earth: The planet is absorbing more of the sun’s energy than what bounces back to space, thanks in part to heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
Accountability check
The EPA’s science advisory vacuum
Last week, the Trump administration fired all of the members of two key advisory panels for the EPA, the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) and Science Advisory Board (SAB). While these boards don’t write EPA policy, their guidance and comments often offer key support when decisions wind up in the courts, explains Inside Climate News. While sweeping out old advisers has happened before (the Biden administration did so in 2021 when it became clear that the selection process didn’t comply with past standards), this time around watchdogs say the cuts are more about clearing the path for the new administration’s agenda than ensuring recommendations are rooted in scientific fact. Looks like we’ll be focused more on commentary from independent experts than from EPA advisers for the next four years.
MIC-DROP CLIMATE STAT
3.68 kilos CO2e
The emissions associated with a single serving of fully loaded nachos—the highest among all Super Bowl snacks. Swapping out beef and dairy slashes that number by more than half. So, to help with your game day munchies, we’ve temporarily unlocked our quick nondairy queso and faux chorizo recipes from the Cool Beans archive.
CONSUME THIS
A VALENTINE’S GUIDE TO SUSTAINABLE CHOCOLATE
By Liza Shoenfein
Many of life’s great pleasures have a difficult relationship with the climate crisis: wine, cheese, coffee, to name a few. Today we’re examining chocolate. Before you close this page and run to the nearest peanut butter cup: No, we’re not going to take away your candy. What we will do is dole out the facts that will help you choose your hunks of rich, creamy happiness wisely.
The environmental impact of chocolate
We won’t sugarcoat this: Chocolate is delicious, but environmentally it’s pretty unpalatable. Producing a kilo of dark chocolate creates 46.7 kilos of greenhouse gas emissions. That’s second only to beef (which, by the way, is more than double that at 99.5 kilos), according to the go-to analysis of foods’ impact published in the journal Science. Making a kilo of sugar, for a sweeter comparison, generates 3.2 kilos. Americans eat roughly 20 pounds (9 kilos) of chocolate per person a year, which is far less than our beef or chicken intake, but it still adds up.
Why the jumbo-sized footprint? More than half of it traces back to deforestation; vast swaths of land are cleared to accommodate cacao farms. Packaging and transportation also contribute to emissions—one study even showed that transporting chocolate is intensive enough to cancel out the positive impacts of growing it organically.
But according to a 2018 study in Food Research International, impacts vary among different kinds of chocolate. The authors compared the three most popular types sold in the U.K.: bars of solid chocolate, wrapped candy bars like Mars and Snickers, and bags of individually wrapped minis. “We found that the worst for the environment were the chocolates in bags, due to the additional amount of packaging used to wrap each chocolate in the bag,” says co-author Adisa Azapagic, professor of sustainable chemical engineering at the University of Manchester.
What about milk versus dark? “We also found that the ingredients used for the production of milk chocolate have a significant impact on the environment,” says Azapagic. But there are caveats. The addition of milk powder, palm oil, and sugar increase a treat’s footprint. Dark chocolate requires more cocoa, which means more land use and deforestation. So that debate’s kinda a wash.
And the drawbacks don’t end there. Azapagic’s study found that it takes 1,000 liters of water to make a single bar. Another issue is that 60% of the cocoa bought by the world’s top chocolate brands comes from Ghana and the Ivory Coast, where most workers don’t make a living wage and forced child labor is common practice.
So what’s a chocoholic to do?
We promised that we weren’t going to take away your candy, and we meant it. No chocolate is perfectly planet-friendly, but there are ways to spot treats that will do less to yuck your yum. Here’s what to keep in mind when you’re browsing the candy aisle:
Good: Look for certification stamps
Rainforest Alliance Certified is intended to indicate that the chocolate was produced using sustainable farming and fair labor practices, and Fair Trade means producers intend to meet certain labor standards. But as with labels on egg cartons, these marks aren’t guarantees: The chocolate industry is mired in transparency issues and the origin of much of the cocoa in those bars isn’t traceable.
Better: Avoid excess packaging
Lots of little wrappers are made of plastic—which is predominantly made from fossil fuels. Flimsy plastics are often the least recyclable and often end up burned, which has a whole host of other environmental problems. “Consumers should choose chocolates that have the least packaging,” Azapagic says. That means avoiding bags of individually wrapped minis in favor of one big bar. Some chocolate bars come wrapped in aluminum foil and/or paper, both of which are more easily recycled than plastic.
Best: Do your research–and save chocolate for special occasions
Check out the Chocolate Scorecard, an annually updated assessment of the world’s top chocolatiers that takes into account everything from environmental impact to labor conditions. Choose chocolate from the top of the list, such as Tony’s, Ritter Sport, and Halba.
No matter what kind of chocolate you crave, the key is moderation—just like other carbon-heavy treats. Save chocolate-filled delicacies for special celebrations, and you may find the waiting makes it all the more delicious.