Lighter Fluid & Gas Or Charcoal

Grillin’ and chillin’ and polluting.

This is The Environment Report. I’m Lester Graham.

Alright… we’re not here to make anybody feel guilty about grilling in the backyard. I mean… grilling is a great American summer time tradition.

So… let’s say you’ve got your charcoal. And now you’re squirting it with lighter fluid to get the fire going.

“Oooo. (laugh) Well, lighter fluid contains something called volatile organic compounds and helps to form a pollutant called ground level ozone.

Beth Gorman is the the Pima County Department of Environmental Quality in Tuscon. She says that ozone contributes to smog.
“This is a bad thing that we don’t want to breathe.”

And… lighter fluid residue can end up getting on your grilled veggies or burgers.

“It’s – it’s kinda toxic.”

Yeah, you don’t want petroleum distallates on your food.

Gorman suggests a charcoal chimney which can get your charcoal lighted in no time… or an electric charcoal starter. By the way, she says… self-starting charcoal… can be nearly as bad as squirting on the lighter fluid.

(((STING)))

This is The Environment Report.

So, let’s say you skip the charcoal lighter fluid. But… what about a gas grill. We sent reporter Jennifer Guerra to find out which type of grill is greener: gas or charcoal.

GUERRA: Neil Fisher thinks he’s an environmentally friendly kind of guy. He and his wife recycle, they use compact fluorescent light bulbs in the house, they walk most places around town and hardly ever use their car.

But when it comes to outdoor grilling…it’s charcoal all the way.

FISHER: It may be a little decadent when you’re taking the environment into consideration, but I do it.

[grill AMB]

GUERRA: Fisher is grilling burgers and Jamaican jerk chicken on a basic Weber kettle. To get the fire started, Fisher throws about 8 pounds of hardwood lump charcoal into a chimney starter.

FISHER: I don’t use the lighter fluid, I just use the charcoal chimney. So that’s something. But yeah I don’t kid myself that this is at all healthy for the world. I kind of joke about it, too, well there goes my carbon footprint. Suddenly I’m carbon Sasquatch.

GUERRA: To find out if Fisher really is a carbon Sasquatch, I called up Eric Johnson in Switzerland:

JOHNSON: The footprint of using charcoal is about 3 times higher than the footprint of gas.

GUERRA: Johnson published a study in the journal: Environmental Impact Assessment Review. He compared the carbon dioxide emissions – or carbon footprint – of the two most popular types of grills: charcoal and propane gas.

When it comes to carbon emissions – gas grills win hands down. Use a gas grill for an hour, emit 5.6 pounds of carbon dioxide. Use charcoal briquettes for an hour, emit a whopping 11 pounds of CO2.

But if we look at the total carbon cycle of the two fuels, we get a different picture.

That’s because charcoal is made out of wood, which is a renewable energy source. So if the charcoal is harvested locally and sustainably, re-grown trees can absorb that CO2…essentially making charcoal carbon neutral.

Propane gas on the other hand, is made out of oil, which is NOT renewable. So charcoal wins that round.

But does any of this really matter? Environmental scientist Bill Curie at the University of Michigan says it’s definitely not a big-ticket item like the size of your house or the number of cars you have.

CURRIE: But at the same time, we make dozens or hundreds of these choices a day. And if we know that one alternative is better than another, these little things do matter b/c they add up.

GUERRA: Especially when you consider that Americans are expected to use more than 60 million grills – both charcoal and gas – on July 4th. That's the carbon equivalent of 900-thousand trees. Now THAT'S a Carbon Sasquatch.


Look, enjoy your weekend… just lay off the lighter fluid… and maybe plant a tree for Independence Day.

That’s The Environment Report. I’m Lester Graham.