Climate Change Chocolate Bars: Reduce Your Carbon Footprint with a Candy Bar

The folks at TerraPass and Whole Foods market want you to believe that by eating the Climate Change Chocolate Bar you will get a 133 pound carbon offset. What? Yep, that is the claim!

You can check it out for yourself http://www.terrapass.com/lp/index.chocolate.html I saw this concept on the internet the other day and had to check it out for myself.

Now we all want to hep to reduce greenhouse gasses, but 133 ponds? By eating a chocolate bar? How is that even possible?

According to TerraPass, your $4.95 purchases the 133 pounds of carbon offsets. I had to look that up as to how you buy a carbon offset. I found this from The David Suzuki Foundation:

A "carbon offset" is an emission reduction credit from another organization's project that results in less carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere than would otherwise occur. Carbon offsets are typically measured in tons of CO2-equivalents (or 'CO2e') and are bought and sold through a number of international brokers, online retailers, and trading platforms.

(http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Climate_Change/What_You_Can_Do/carbon_offsets.asp)

Okay so we now know that TerraPass has invested in some kind of Co2 reduction projects. You can actually find out more specifics by going to their website http://www.terrapass.com and read for yourself.

Any way, I decided to give the Climate Change Chocolate Bar a try. I ordered a 3 pack for 14.50. (plus $6.00 shipping and handling) I figured in for a penny, in for a pound. Or in this case, 399 pounds of carbon offset!

I got the Climate Change Chocolate Bar in about four days, and tried a bar. They actually taste pretty good, a cut above your average chocolate bar I have to admit. The wrapper of each bar gives you 15 tips for reducing your carbon footprint. There are tips like washing your clothes in cold water, hanging them up to dry, pretty much common sense things like that. If you want ot see the whole list of 15 tips, you are just going t have to purchase some of the Climate Change Chocolate Bars yourself.

One thing to consider: many of the cocoa beans used to make chocolate are produced by destroying the rainforest, and using chemical pesticides. Some West African Cocoa plantations have been known to use child labor. However there are free trade plantations that use natural means to grow and process the cocoa beans. Let's hope that TerraPass gets its chocolate from these plantations.

Saving the planet by eating chocolate? It is an interesting proposition to say the least.