As you may have known by now, your orange juice traveled a long way before it got into your tall glass. The long attendant process translates to stages of carbon emission. For starters, the orange fruit was grown with the use of greenhouse gases-emitting nitrogen fertilizers. Does not sound too appetizing, does it? The processing of fruit into juice utilized some form of machinery that ran on power and energy which, in turn, must have surely emitted CO2 into the atmosphere. Sounds mechanical, I know. The juice had to be in some form of packaging to get to your grocery store. The raw materials that were sourced and/or recycled for the use of packaging and labeling, once again, shot CO2 up into the skies. Finally, the distribution and delivery process entailed transport that assuredly used fuel that definitely emitted carbon dioxide.

And since you wanted your orange juice to be cold in the morning, your refrigerator uses freon that turns into CFCs that likewise burn a hole in the ozone layer. All the stages of your OJ’s product life mean only one thing: your drink of choice added to the warming up of the near-surface atmosphere of the planet, as well as its oceans.

In the light of the recent pop culture trend to measure carbon footprint, PepsiCo went ahead and summoned Carbon Trust, an independent and recognized carbon footprinter, to measure the global warming contribution of its Tropicana juice drink and thereby suggest ways by which to make the footprint smaller. It was discovered that a two-liter brick-packaged Tropicana juice has the equivalent CO2 emission of 1.7 kg. And since all this information has already robbed you of your appetite for breakfast anyway, we might as well add the uncanny comparison that your shoes have a carbon foortprint of about a hunder kg. of CO2, depending on the style and model.

So, the next time you enjoy that tall glass of cold orange juice with your breakfast, think about it hard. The drink in your hand is really no different from those dirty, sooty, and dismal coal power plants that emit asthma-inducing smog into China’s skies. Then, you might just want to consider eating the real fruit next time, if only because it has lots of fiber that wil be good for your colon.