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Learn, Garden & Reflect with Cornell Garden-Based Learning

My Carbon Footprint

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Overview

This activity will highlight awareness of our food system impacts the carbon cycle, and how growing vegetables and buying local foods reduces global carbon emissions. Variations of the activity explore the Carbon Cycle, and the relationships of weather, climate, climate change, and the production of our food.

Skill Level

Beginner; See Variations for intermediate and Advanced Leveled activities on the topic

Learner Outcomes, Youth will:
  • Demonstrate personal relationship with the earth and the input they have on the environment.
  • Understand the benefits of a “low carbon” diet (i.e. a local food diet).
  • Illustrate knowledge inputs through a food system map and collage to find out how far their food has traveled from field to table.
  • Recognize that food plays a role in climate change
  • Express daily actions that affect climate change.
Education Standards
  • NS.K-4.3 Life Science: Life cycles of organisms, Organisms and environments
  • NS.5-8.3 Life Science: Populations and ecosystems
  • NS.9-12.3 Life Science: Interdependence of organisms, organization in living systems
Success Indicators

Greater awareness of the carbon cycle and impact from food systems .

Life Skills

Problem-solving, critical thinking, healthy life-style choice

Time Needed

2 hours (more time needed for baking the cake)

Materials List
  • Chocolate cake ingredients
  • Kitchen to bake cake
  • Print outs of letter‐sized maps of the world for each person
  • Small stickers
  • Rulers
  • Pencils
  • Find a recipe for a chocolate cake.
  • Go to a local supermarket and find the cake ingredients. If there are different brands available for an ingredient, choose the one that is the most local.
  • Magazines and newspapers with pictures of food, trucks, farms, people, stores, etc.
  • Glue, scissors, markers, paper, etc.
  • Food items: popcorn, cereal, bread
Space

Kitchen classroom or other space to with an oven and counter space for large groups to observe cake ingredients and to work on collages.

Suggested Group Size

12-15 or more

Acknowledgements

Introduction

We have a tremendous impact on the environment through the food we eat. The average American meal has traveled more than 2000 miles before it arrives on your plate. We can make a big impact to help stop climate change by committing to eating as locally as possible. A good way to eat local is to start growing as much food as possible in your garden. This activity will highlight awareness of our food system impacts the carbon cycle, and how growing vegetables and buying local foods reduces global carbon emissions. Variations of the activity explore the Carbon Cycle, and the relationships of weather, climate, climate change, and the production of our food.

Opening Questions: What do you know about our carbon footprint? Have you thought about how much energy (carbon) it takes for food to reach your plate?

Background Information

Before the Activity: Purchase materials and set put all the ingredients on the table for each activity. Save the packaging from the cake.

Let’s Do It!

Map a chocolate cake!
  • Follow the recipe and make the cake.
  • While the cake is baking, take the time to map the chocolate cake to see how far it traveled to your meeting place!
  • Distribute paper‐sized maps of the world and small stickers.
  • Locate NY on the map and put a sticker there.
  • Talk about each cake ingredient, inspecting the package to find out where it came from.
  • Put a sticker on that location.
  • Using the ruler, draw a straight line from NY to the place where the ingredient came from.
  • Do the same for all the ingredients. By the end, there should be a web of lines connecting to NY from around the world.
  • Ask the students how far they think the ingredients traveled. Ask them to make guesses… 100 miles, 1000 miles, 1 million miles?
  • Measure the lines and add them up: i.e. 8 inches + 4 inches + 3 inches = Total distance of 15 inches.
  • Based on the legend of the map, i.e. 1 inch = 100 miles, calculate that 15 inches = 1500 miles traveled. Discuss how the total carbon “food” print of the cake is 1500 miles of travel. That’s a long way to go!
  • Additional questions to ask for each ingredient are:
  • What steps did this go through between being picked in the field and sold in the store? List as many as you can think of.
  • How do you think this item was transported (Truck, plane, train, etc?)
  • How much time do you think it took to get from field to table?
  • What resources might have been used in getting it here (topsoil, gasoline, fuel, oil, water, coal, etc.?
  • Is the container recyclable?
  • What happens to the waste products from making this?
  • It’s now time to eat the chocolate cake and be mindful of how far it traveled your plate!
Create a local food system collage
  • Begin by talking about the long adventure that food takes from seed to table (i.e. planting, harvesting, processing, packaging, transporting, etc).
  • Ask students to identify what’s locally grown in NYS.
  • Give each student a food item as a starting point to create their own food system collage.
  • Invite them to use the magazines, newspapers, and art materials to illustrate a collage of their local food system.

Talk It Over

Share

After they are finished making the collage, they can share what the different photos mean to them.

Reflect/Apply

In what ways can we reduce our carbon footprint in the food system? Knowing what you do about your carbon footprint, are you inspired to try one or all of the following: Commit for one week to eat as locally as possible? Mapping the food you eat at home for a week?

Generalize

To wrap up the activity, talk about how growing food in your garden or buying from local farms means it doesn’t have to be transported as far (by truck, plane, or boat) and how this is good for the climate!

Variations

Intermediate Level

Try out the National Agriculture Literacy curriculum’s Climate Change Phenomena: Bananas in Our Breadbasket? to further explore the Carbon Cycle, and the relationships of weather, climate, climate change, and the production of our food. Learning Standard: NS.5-8.3 Life Science: Function in living systems, Populations and ecosystems

Advanced Level

Explore the Carbon Hoofprints: Cows and Climate Change at https://agclassroom.org/matrix/lesson/707/ to explore the carbon cycle and evaluate the carbon footprint of beef cattle, using critical thinking skills and the Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning model to determine the effect of cows’ methane production on the environment and investigate the extent cattle contribute to climate change. Learning Standard: NS.9-12.6 Personal and Social Perspectives: Environmental quality, Science in local, national, and global challenges.

References

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Horticulture Section, School of Integrative Plant Science, Cornell University

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