by Nadia Jessica Jonatan
Why do environmentalists recommend us to cut down meat consumption? Simply because vegan & vegetarian lifestyle is way more eco-friendly. From carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions, let’s discuss what makes a plant-based lifestyle more eco-friendly.
Ever heard of the term “Carbon Footprint”? According to WHO, carbon footprint is a measure of the impact your activities have on the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) produced through the burning of fossil fuels and is expressed as a weight of CO2 emissions produced in tonnes.
Research done by Wilson (2015) at Shrink That Footprint found that in comparison to meat lover diet, vegetarian & vegan diet has half less carbon footprint! This is because the meat lover diet includes carbon footprint from livestock maintenance, feed supply, meat processing, transportation and packaging.
By shifting to a vegetarian diet, you can reduce 1,6 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year (Wilson, 2015) Can’t imagine how big of a deal that is? That equals driving a car from Jakarta to Bandung for about 53 times!* That is a lot of emission prevented right? While the numbers may not be accurate to the growing population and different nations, we can conclude that a plant-based diet has less carbon footprint, hence more eco-friendly.
Vegetarian Diet Has About Less Carbon Footprint than Meat Lover
(Shrink That Footprint, 2015)
Has it ever occurred to you that livestock production requires so much water to maintain? Water is needed not only for drink or hygiene purposes, but also for their feed production. The hay they eat? Someone has to water that everyday for months. Meat lover diet actually jeopardizes water scarcity.. Or shall we say, water footprint?
Cited directly from Green Eatz (2014) beef has the highest water footprint of any food, needing 900 gallons to produce an 8oz steak. And beef takes six times the amount of water as lentils to produce the same amount of protein. In contrast, vegetables use only 20 gallons of water and grains just 60 gallons to produce half a pound.
Do plants poop--I mean produce waste? Well yes, they do produce carbon dioxide during respiration, but the amount is overcome by photosynthesis. In contrast, livestock (especially cattle) produces methane from their excretion, which is a greenhouse gas that worsens the climate.
Johnson & Johnson (1995) stated ruminant livestock can produce 250 to 500 L of methane per day. This level of production results in estimates of the contribution by cattle to global warming that may occur in the next 50 to 100 year to be a little less than 2%.
Not so fun fact, farmed livestock are responsible for 14.5% of all emissions related to human activity, and cows make up by far the largest proportion of that. Cattle urine is also a climate offender. It releases nitrous oxide, another harmful greenhouse gas that captures reradiated infrared radiation from the Earth's surface and subsequently warming the troposphere (Edmond, 2019)
In conclusion, plant-based diet is more eco-friendly in terms of carbon footprint, water footprint, and greenhouse gas production (CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide).
So.. thinking of going plant-based for the weekend?
References:
Edmond, C. 2019. Scientists have a new suggestion to create more climate-friendly cows. World Economic Forum. Available at: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/07/methane-cow-beef-greenhouse-gas-prebiotic/. Accessed on October 25th, 2020
Green Eatz. 2014. Food’s Water Footprint. Green Eatz. Available at: https://www.greeneatz.com/1/post/2014/03/foods-water-footprint.html. Accessed on October 25th, 2020.
Johnson, K. A. & Johnson, D. E. 1995. Methane Emissions From Cattle. Journal of Animal Science, Volume 73, Issue 8, August 1995, Pages 2483–2492, https://doi.org/10.2527/1995.7382483x
Palmer, B. 2015. The Speed Sweet Spot. Natural Resources Defense Council. Available at: https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/speed-sweet-spot. Accessed on October 25th, 2020.
Wilson, L. 2015. The Carbon Footprint of 5 Diets Compared. Shrink That Footprint. Available at: http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/food-carbon-footprint-diet. Accessed on October 25th, 2020.
*1.6 tonnes of carbon dioxide equals emission from driving 5000 miles or 8000 kilometres with your car on minimal traffic because you’re likely to emit around 0.7 pounds of carbon dioxide per mile traveled (Palmer, 2015) and assuming Jakarta to Bandung distance is 150km (via Google maps)