So, you've taken the recycling out to the curb, and you've replaced a burned out incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent. You've put a low-flow showerhead in the bathroom, you set the thermostat a little cooler this winter and sealed up that drafty basement, and maybe you're doing your shopping in a Prius. Shrinking your carbon footprint and saving water is important to you (cutting your energy bills is fun too!), and you're looking for more things you can do to make a difference.
What's next?
How about a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (PB&J)? Your lunchbox might seem like a strange place to change the world, but as it turns out, your next meal could be the most powerful action you take for the environment all day.
Eating one lunch based on plant ingredients instead of the average American lunch saves about two and a half pounds of CO2-equivalent emissions, which is about 40% of what you save commuting one day in a Prius instead of a standard sedan. It saves land compared to the animal-product alternatives, and it also saves 133 gallons of water. That means five PB&Js (or five bean burritos, or five hummus wraps, etc.) will save a month's worth of your water savings from your low flow showerhead.
Funny, your lunch doesn't look big enough to save 133 gallons of water, and it's hard to imagine it making much of a difference in GHG emissions, but there's a lot more that goes into your lunch than what you actually eat. If you're eating something that comes from animals, like meat, dairy products, or eggs, then it took a lot of plant matter like grass or hay, and, in our industrial farming system, a lot of corn and soy, to feed the animals that produced what you're eating. It takes a lot of land and water to grow all that feed, not to mention pesticides and fertilizer. It also takes a lot of fossil fuel to run all the equipment used to grow, transport, and process the feed crops. Burning all that gasoline and diesel produces CO2, and the fertilizers produce other gases like methane and nitrous oxide, which are about 20 and 300 times, respectively, more powerful than CO2.
But it still might not seem obvious how you can save water, land, and emissions by eating more plant-based foods. Won't you have to grow more crops to replace the animal products?
The surprising answer is no. The key is that animals are inefficient at converting what they eat into what we eat. Most of what their feed goes to is actually keeping their bodies running, and only a little of it gets added to their muscles for meat or passed along as eggs or milk. In other words, only a little of the corn and soy they eat, and working down the chain, little of the land, water, fuel, and other inputs, go to produce the animal products you eat. So when you skip the middlemen (or middle-cows), you're making more efficient use of our natural resources and avoiding lots of the pollution.
And then there are the famous cow farts, the less-famous cow belches, and the even less-famous but very potent and nasty methane and nitrous oxide that come out of all the other ‘products' that come out of livestock - manure. Factor these in, and even beef produced in non-industrial pasture systems produces lots of emissions.
Many recent studies have quantified the relative environmental impact of animal product consumption versus plant product consumption - in other words, choosing between the ham sandwich and the PB&J or between the Mongolian beef and the tofu. The article by Michael Kwan "Ten Studies on Meat & Global Warming" wraps up some of the most important of these reports, including a classic that finds that eating a vegan diet instead of the average American diet cuts greenhouse gas emissions more than driving a Prius versus a standard sedan. A report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization found that the global livestock sector is responsible for about 18% of global warming, compared to 17% from transportation, and yet another report found that easing up on meat and milk consumption can shrink your carbon footprint more than eating local.
So what are you going to do about it?
Luckily there's a lot you can do, and any meal you're making or ordering at a restaurant is a great place to start. It's also really easy and cheap - not to knock buying a hybrid car, but picking oatmeal for breakfast and eating a few more bean burritos each week might actually save you money.
Feeling ambitious? Try two plant-based meals every day. You might decide to completely eliminate your animal product consumption (go vegan), but you can accomplish a lot focusing on any given meal as an opportunity to pick a plant-based option, similar to deciding to ride the bike to work one morning instead of driving, but maybe driving the next day when it's raining.
You might also decide to use meat, cheese, and other animal products for flavor more than for the substance of the meal - putting meat in its place, as Mark Bittman described in his New York Times Newspaper article explaining how to use meat as a supporting ingredient.
There are many things we can all do to ease our impact on the environment, a lot of opportunities to make the world a better place, from turning the lights on only when needed, to eating carbon-lite meals. No matter which way you go about it - one meal at a time or half a meal at a time - the next time you eat can be a delicious, thrifty action for a better planet.
Feeling hungry?
Bernard Brown is the director of the PB&J Campaign.
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