Ben & Jerry’s is cutting the carbon footprint of your ice cream

At a dairy farm in Vermont that supplies milk for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, cows will begin eating a small amount of red seaweed later this year.补充可以帮助cut the emissions from cow burps- 乳制品碳足迹的最大部分之一 - 在某些情况下超过80％。这是本与杰里（Ben＆Jerry）现在在一个试点计划中进行的一系列变化之一，该计划被15个农场（被称为Mootopia项目），旨在承受其气候影响。该公司超过一半的碳足迹来自其购买的乳制品成分。

The ice cream company has worked with its suppliers to help improve sustainability in the past, including asking farmers to adopt“再生”农业实践，例如覆盖种植, which may help sequester more carbon in the soil. But until the new pilot, “we’ve never really been able to look at dairy-farm emissions holistically,” says Jenna Evans, global sustainability manager for Ben & Jerry’s. Part of the challenge was that there wasn’t a good solution for dealing with the methane that cows naturally produce when they burp. But that’s changing; companies like蓝色海洋谷仓, which is working with the brand on a seaweed trial beginning later this year, are introducing new supplements that could make a difference.

飞行员的目标是帮助将排放量减少一半的农场，在佛蒙特州和荷兰都在本＆杰里的欧洲冰淇淋工厂附近举行。该公司正在帮助农民采用新技术等新技术，这些技术使用细菌从肥料中处理甲烷（乳制品排放的另一个主要来源），并产生肥料和电力，可以将其出售回佛蒙特州的电网。

虽然该公司没有为安装新设备付费，但它向农民支付了“甲烷破坏”的服务，或者该品牌随着碳足迹的收缩而获得的好处。这也有助于为农民提供技术支持以进行更改。例如，能源顾问正在计算投资新设备的投资回收期。该公司还正在帮助农场安装新的可再生能源，改变牧场以支持生物多样性，并增加当地的草料生产，因此必须长时间运送到农场的谷物。

埃文斯说：“我们确实与农场合作，试图查看什么有效，因为我们不知道什么会坚持或在财务上有意义。”更改将需要时间。例如，尽管最近被加利福尼亚州食品和农业部在加利福尼亚使用，但蓝色海洋谷仓正在扩大生产，但牛的海藻补充剂尚未广泛使用。佛蒙特州将于今年晚些时候使用补充剂的佛蒙特农场将成为商业示范的一部分。（尽管一项研究有质疑使用海藻的安全性, arguing that the bromoform it contains can end up in milk; Evans says that the study used larger quantities of seaweed than its farmers will use, and other studies have concluded that it’s safe.)

The various solutions in the pilot all help to directly reduce the emissions from dairy, something that Evans says is required for the company to meet its science-based climate targets. “I can’t go purchase carbon offsets from a forestry project in Panama that has nothing to do with making ice cream—I have to make direct reductions in our ice cream supply chain,” she says.

随着飞行员在未来两年的发展，该公司计划扩大其在其供应链中其余农场工作的解决方案。它还计划与乳制品行业的其他人共享这些解决方案。“我们希望在这个项目中真正透明，以便其他品牌可以在学习时学习；因此，我们将采取最成功和最可行的做法，”埃文斯说。