Masterchef is a great show, and we all love it. But have you ever thought about its carbon footprint?

A kitchen full of ovens can't be good for energy usage.  We know that at one stage the Masterchef kitchen contained 24 Ariston open space ovens, each consuming around 2600W of power per hour.

Assuming the ovens are used 4 hours a day, 5 days at week, the electricity usage for ovens alone approaches 1,250kW a week. That the equivalent of around a tonne of carbon (based on 1 tonnes of CO2 per MW of power produced), or 20,000 black balloons full of carbon.

So if Masterchef graces our screens in 2011, let's hope they invest in some solar panels to offset all that electricity. And why not throw in some bokashi bins and water recycling at the same time!