Carbon Free Sugar?

As a way to attract a certain clientele, one of our very good local coffee shops here in Central Virginia offers fair trade, shade grown, bird friendly mocha. Now thanks to Domino, their customers can rise to even greater heights of environmentalist rectitude—they can sweeten their double espressos with certified CarbonFree® sugar. Wow, a carbohydrate without carbon! If the carbon is removed from sucrose, what's left? Water.

It turns out that what Domino is actually promoting is:

Sugar is a naturally sweet product from our earth, so it's natural for us to want to be good stewards of our environment. We have a head start at this, in fact, because the sugar cane plant converts sunlight to energy more efficiently than any other major crop. As a result of this, and the various earth friendly farming techniques and energy producing efforts at our Florida facility, specially marked packages of Domino® Sugar have been certified CarbonFree® by Carbonfund.org, a non-profit organization that certifies products with carbon neutral footprints. The label CarbonFree® means the product's carbon footprint is rendered neutral by cutting greenhouse gases.

OK then. While New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg may hate sugar, it is, at least, also largely DNA Free.

#Science #Greenhousegases #CarbonDioxide