Food is huge when it comes to the impact it has on the environment.
It’s also one of the things that we have a lot of control over.
We can change what we eat, where we buy it and how we waste it.
So this is a great one to tackle head on.
Meat Eater / Veggie / Vegan / Flexitarian
What you gonna be?
Why ?
I used to be a massive carnivore. Steak, ribs, chicken wings – loved them. But then I read about how crazy it was to have to produce the feed the animal for months just to then eventually produce meat to eat. The maths just didn’t make sense. So I quit eating meat (I do eat left overs from other people’s plates at dinner if it’s going in the bin though)
It is a straight forward argument. We grow plants to feed to animals for months or years then eat the animals. By doing this we use more resources and produce more green house gases than if we just, simply, ate the plants in the first place.
Eating less meat could be one of the quickest and easiest ways you can reduce your carbon footprint.
It has been reported that 51% of global greenhouse gasses are down to animal agriculture (production of feed, transportation and methane).
Just cutting out the worst offenders and reducing your overall consumption will make a huge difference.
Try it, it really isn’t that hard to do. I used to eat meat both at lunchtime and dinner so if I can do it anyone can..
Worst offenders
Lamb and Beef are by far the worst offenders here..
Check this chart for a break down of different foods and the amount of CO2 they each produce.
- Cattle produce more green house gasses than cars, plane, boats and trains combined.
- Changing to a plant based diet could cut your carbon emissions by over 51% – THAT’S HUGE!
- 1/2 an acre produces 37,000 pounds of plant food or just around 120 pounds of meat.
- Meat requires 18 times as much land as Vegan food does! That’s huge.
- Most of the deforestation that occurs in rainforests (up to 91% of it in the Amazon) around the world happen for the purpose of raising cattle. Cut out the demand and save the rainforests – the world’s lungs. We need them.
- 1 burger uses more water than 2 months of showering.
- 30% of the worlds fresh water consumption is used by raising animals
It’s a no brainer from my eyes.
You don’t have to cut meat and dairy out by 100% reducing it will make a big difference but the more that you can the bigger difference it will make.
Maybe try starting with a meat free monday, start swapping out your milk for alternatives (try and avoid Almond milk as the farming techniques used are, apparently, pretty bad) and start by eliminating the worst offenders (Lamb and beef) then from there you will hopefully see how easy it is and keep on going…
Eat Organic
Bugs are dying – it’s insect armagedon (check out the page on this site about it) out there. And this is possibly one of the most serious things that’s happening right now on our planet. Insects are fundamental to life on earth. Small animals eat the insects, insects pollinate our plants.
They are an essential part of the cycle of life. We need them.
We need to stop with the insect killing pesticides.
Waste less
When you look at how much food you waste it is shameful. We all do it. We miss the use by date and don’t realise till the mould is growing on it. Things get nudged to the back to the fridge.
It happens. But we need to stop that.
Imagine how much energy goes into producing some green beans from Peru. Farmed, transported, bagged, stacked, bought, stored only for them to go mouldy before they are eaten.
Time to change that.