Big Green Breakthrough

Once you get to know me, you’ll realize I’m a HUGE fan of organic food. Mostly, that’s because the thought of eating nasty pesticides and herbicides along with my fruit and veggies gives me the heebie jeebies. But now it turns out that organic agriculture offers another benefit beyond my health: it reduces the CO2 emissions that cause climate change, too. PepsiCo, which owns Tropicana brand orange juice, just completed an analysis of the carbon impact of producing OJ. What’d they discover? The biggest single source of carbon emissions came not from running their factory or shipping heavy juice cartons. It came from simply growing oranges, which, when done conventionally, uses a lot of nitrogen-based fertilizer. The CO2 connection? Nitrogen fertilizer is made from natural gas and can turn into a powerful greenhouse gas when spread on fields. Orange juice the old fashioned way, any one?