What is the carbon footprint of honey per kg?
Count the transport of hives and honey, heating and filtering energy, and the jar or bottle. Divide by kilograms packed. Bee-keeping itself uses little energy, so for honey the glass jar and road transport are often most of the footprint; sugar feeding in lean seasons adds a little.
At the apiary
- Migratory beekeeping moves hives by truck between crops: count the diesel or hire trips.
- Sugar fed to colonies in lean months.
- Hive boxes and frames, spread over their years of use.
Processing
- Heating, filtering and moisture reduction: electricity or LPG.
- Filling lines.
Packaging
A glass jar can weigh about as much as the honey in a small pack. PET or pouches are lighter. State the pack in your figure.
Worked example: honey plant per kg (one month)
- Electricity: 4,000 kWh x 0.710 = 2,840 kg CO2
- Collection truck diesel: 500 litres x 2.68 = 1,340 kg CO2
- Honey packed (kg): 20,000
- Plant total: 4,180 / 20,000 = 0.209 kg CO2 per kg
- Add jars, caps and labels for the full figure
Inputs are illustrative; use your own bills and production records.
What Senseible does here
Senseible reads the plant's electricity bills (CEA grid factor 0.710 kg CO2 per kWh, CO2 Baseline Database version 21.0) and fuel invoices (IPCC 2006 defaults) into a fingerprinted Scope 1 and 2 record, the plant-level input to a per-unit figure. Bought-in materials go to the supplier evidence trail; product reports are self-declared drafts.
Sources: GHG Protocol Product Standard, ISO 14067:2018, Carbon footprint of products (iso.org), IPCC 2006 Guidelines, Volume 2 Energy (fuel defaults), CEA CO2 Baseline Database, version 21.0
Last reviewed 2026-10-20.