Choosing a takeaway pizza

Everyone loves a pizza and its one of the most popular takeaways around the world. But how can you choose a pizza and keep down your carbon footprint?

Pizza and cheese

One thing to think about when choosing a pizza is the amount of cheese that is on a pizza. Mike Bernes-Lee’s book How Bad are Bananas suggests that we should treat cheese as a meat in terms of emissions. Cheese is a dairy product which comes from cows and produces a high amount of carbon emissions. Berners-Lee calculations of typical emissions from different types of pizzas show that although a quattro formaggi (four cheeses) pizza is a veggie pizza, a four cheeses pizza has the same number of emissions as a pepperoni pizza. When you compare a four cheeses pizza to a margherita pizza, which has much less cheese, there is a third less carbon emissions. So, when ordering a pizza try to keep the amount of cheese down or swap for vegan cheese.

For a 10-inch pizza:

Mighty Veg (vegan – no cheese)           1kg CO2e

Margherita pizza                                       1.4kg CO2e

Four cheeses pizza                                  2.2kg CO2e

Pepperoni pizza                                        2.2kg CO2e

Meat feast pizza                                        2.8kg CO2e

Different types of cheese have similar carbon emissions, whether it is cheddar, mozzarella or parmesan because they all contain cow’s milk. Choosing one cheese over another will not make any difference in reducing emissions. Only choosing a vegan cheese alternative instead will reduce carbon emissions because they avoid meat and dairy. From an environmentally friendly perspective, vegan pizzas are the best ones to choose.  

Pizza and meat

Meat always increases the carbon emissions of a meal and in particular beef and lamb. So, it is usually better to choose a veggie option over a meat option. If you really want to put meat on your pizza, then chicken, pork or fish are better options than any pizza with beef or lamb. Beef and lamb have a much higher carbon footprint than any other meat because of the way cows and sheep are raised. This is why there is a big difference in emissions between the pepperoni pizza and a meat feast pizza. Pepperoni pizzas only have pork while meat feast pizzas have beef as well as pork.