Climate Mitigation by Dietary Choices: The Carbon Footprint of Tofu

A growing number of analyses demonstrate that in order to achieve global greenhouse gas emissions (GHGEs) targets, it is necessary to reduce GHGEs generated by the food industry.  Protein rich foods of animal origin have a particularly high contribution to global GHGEs; therefore, to mitigate climate change it is imperative to identify protein rich foods with a relatively low carbon footprint. The purpose of this study was to assess the GHGEs generated from tofu production.

We utilized SimaPro 8.0 software to calculate the GHGEs with global warming potential (carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), and nitrous oxide (N₂O)) following the Traci 2 life cycle impact assessment (LCA) methodology with 100 years horizon.  To calculate the GHGEs we used cumulative data provided by a tofu manufacturer that contained all the inputs needed to produce tofu (soybeans, transportation, packaging materials, electricity, gas and water), including office operations.  The GHGEs are expressed as CO₂ equivalents (CO₂eq). Our functional unit was 1 kg of tofu and 1 kg of protein. The LCA boundaries are from the cradle (farm production) to factory gate.

Producing 1 kg of packaged tofu generates 0.622 kg CO₂ eq. Producing 1 kg of protein from tofu generates 6.22 kg CO₂ eq.    Comparatively, the GHGEs reported by SimaPro for producing beef round fresh at the warehouse generates 43 kg of CO₂ eq per kg of beef and 184 kg of CO₂eq per kg of protein from beef.

Tofu is a protein rich food with a low greenhouse gas footprint when compared to beef; therefore, it is a food that can be considered as part of climate change mitigation plans that reduce GHGEs through implementing alternative dietary choices.