- Eating in a café? Pay for your carbon footprint!
- The levy surprised visitors
- Similar taxes apply in California
- Denmark taxes agriculture instead of eating in cafes
Eating in a café? Pay for your carbon footprint!
A restaurant chain in Toronto, Canada, has taken an extraordinary initiative: it will charge all its customers a carbon fee on every bill.
The Goodfellas Wood Oven Pizza chain has seven locations in the Toronto area and will now include a 2% carbon tax on all orders[1].
At the bottom of the receipts, the chain gives the rationale for the tax: "What we eat contributes to climate change. Adding a 2% fee to every restaurant bill to invest in carbon capture will help offset our carbon footprint."
The levy surprised visitors
The charge was quickly brought to the restaurant's patrons' attention. One of them, Joseph Kristan, told the foreign media that he came to celebrate a friend's birthday at Goodfellas Wood Oven Pizza in Toronto and noticed an unexpected charge.
"We had a great meal, the drinks were flowing, it was a great time," he said, only to look at the bill and notice the new charge as he left the restaurant[2].
J. Christian and his friends were charged $3.00 and changed. He said it was the first time he had ever seen such a charge on a restaurant bill anywhere in Canada. As long as the money goes where it is supposed to go, he is not opposed to a nominal fee, but as a customer, he would like more guarantees.
The Goodfellas Wood Oven Pizza website also provides more information on the background to the charge. It is said that many of the products used by the restaurant chain come from Italy, so the company has decided to offset its carbon footprint "by supporting Tree Canada's national reforestation program, which plants trees in areas in need of reforestation.
According to the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses, the restaurant's decision to charge for its pollution is perfectly legal.
"It is a business choice to put lines on a receipt. The business has acted in complete good faith," said Julie Kwiecinski of the federation.
She said she thinks customers and business owners should pay attention to a bigger issue: all Canadian businesses are owed $2.5 billion in overdue carbon tax revenue. People have received receipts saying they need to pay for it, but businesses have not.
Similar taxes apply in California
Even earlier, there was talk of a similar tax in the US, in California. Encouraged by a restaurant owner in the San Francisco Bay Area, all eateries in the state were able to sign up to the Restore California Renewable Restaurants programme, which adds a 1% tax to the bill and in some cases a 3% tax. On a cheque of USD 50, the 3% charge would be USD 1,50 and the 1% charge would be 50 cents.
The programme is optional for restaurants and consumers, but the initiative is funded to help farmers change their fields to capture carbon dioxide.
"Across the country, restaurants are an $800 billion business and employ 1 in 10 US workers, which is too much money and too many people not to contribute to the solution," said Anthony Myint, a restaurant owner and one of the initiative's authors[3].
He said adding a few cents to the bill will make customers aware of this and do a good deed. Earlier, the entrepreneur founded the Perennial Farming Initiative, a non-profit organization that aims to help restaurant owners achieve carbon neutrality, i.e., find ways to offset the carbon generated by their business by investing in companies that remove CO2 from the atmosphere. To date, around 25 restaurants worldwide have signed the initiative's pledge.
California has long been a leader in environmental leadership, with Governor Gavin Newsom pledging to make the state carbon neutral by 2045.
Denmark taxes agriculture instead of eating in cafes
In Europe, different green policies are also being adopted, but here, agriculture is being taxed, not eating in restaurants.
Only this spring it was announced that after five months of negotiations with farmers and environmental groups, the Danish government has finally decided to introduce Europe's first carbon tax on agriculture. From 2030, farmers will have to pay DKK 120 or €16 per metric tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent emitted, rising to DKK 300 or €40 from 2035.
The government will also allocate €5.3 billion to reforest 250,000 hectares of agricultural land by 2045 and buy out certain farms to reduce nitrogen emissions.
Denmark is a giant exporter of pork and dairy products, and agriculture is projected to account for 46% of emissions by 2030.
Experts estimate that the carbon tax will reduce emissions by 1.8 million tonnes in 2030, its first year of application, enabling Denmark to reach its target of reducing 70% of total emissions by that year.
The Danish Agriculture and Food Council, the Danish Society for Nature Conservation, the Danish Food Federation (NNF), the Danish Metalworkers' Association, and the Confederation of Danish Industry launched negotiations in February.
