What is the carbon footprint of breakfast cereal like cornflakes?
Add the grain or maize, sugar and other ingredients, then cooking, flaking or extrusion, and toasting, which uses gas ovens or dryers. Packaging, a bag in a carton, and distribution follow. Divide by kg of cereal packed, with rejects counted against output.
Plant energy
- Cooking and conditioning steam.
- Flaking rolls or extruders (electricity).
- Toasting ovens and dryers (gas or electricity).
Ingredients
Maize, wheat, sugar and malt from supplier or database figures, by weight.
What Senseible does here
Senseible reads fuel invoices and electricity bills and applies IPCC 2006 factors and the CEA grid factor (0.710 kg CO2 per kWh), so you can compare Scope 1 and 2 before and after a change from the documents themselves.
Sources: GHG Protocol standards, including the Product Standard, 2006 IPCC Guidelines, Volume 2 Energy
Last reviewed 2026-10-22.