Which chocolate Easter bunnies are the most environmentally friendly? A Swiss consulting company for the preparation of life cycle assessments states: the darker the chocolate, the better for the environment.
The decisive factor in chocolate is the content of milk powder and cocoa butter, as the managing director of ESU Services in Schaffhausen, Niels Jungbluth, explains. Dark chocolate contains no milk powder and only a little cocoa butter.
ESU analyzed three 100 gram bunnies made from dark chocolate, milk chocolate and white chocolate. The analysis shows that the brightest pollute on the environment with climate-damaging greenhouse gases is about as great as that which comes out of the exhaust during an average car journey of 1.7 kilometers. The milk chocolate bunny corresponds to a journey of 1.5 kilometers. Easter bunnies made from dark chocolate with a cocoa content of around 48 percent, on the other hand, only had the same impact on the environment as an average car journey of over 900 meters.
It was examined how much climate-damaging greenhouse gases such as CO2 are produced throughout the entire production and supply chain of the ingredients. This is referred to as the CO2 footprint. The entire “life cycle” of an Easter bunny was considered, from the cultivation of the ingredients to the transport, production, sale and transport to the consumer as well as the disposal of the packaging. The company assumed twelve grams of packaging per bunny.