How going vegan can save the planet
🌎 What one thing you can change in your life to save the planet? GO VEGAN! 🌱
It’s the “single biggest way” to reduce your carbon footprint. If we all went vegan, 75% of the planet’s “arable” farmland would be freed up. If you choose vegetarian, vegan, or flex-atarian, you’re helping our planet considerably. 👏 Progress over perfection. So, how does going vegan save our earth?
✨ Land use is considerably reduced 🐄
✨ GHG emissions reduced 🏭
✨ Water conservation 🌊
✨ Biodiversity protection and resilience 🐨
✨ Feeding 7.6B+ people may become achievable 🫘
How can going vegan save the planet?
Here’s 5 ways that switching to a vegan diet can help to save our planet. 🌎
Land use will be considerably reduced
You’ve likely seen the posts about don’t eat soy and avocados and almond milk due to their land and water use. But, let’s remember not just vegans consume these things. And soy is largely produced for a variety of products and uses beyond tofu. Including animal feed. 67% of deforestation is as a result of feed for animals. Let’s not forget that the use of land to raise animals is not directly for them to be out in the pasture munching grass, this land use leads into runoff ponds, slaughterhouses, manure processing and storage, bio-waste facilities, and on and on.
2. GHG emissions will go down
Emissions from feed production exceed emissions from vegetable protein farming. Why? To extract protein from animals, the ratio is greater than 2 by the time the animals consume the feed. In addition, the digestibility of sub-standard or not optimal diets are a factor, transportation of feed to the animals, along with any by-products resulted from the consumption of feed. Farms are responsible for 61% of GHG emissions coming from food. 81% if you include the deforestation that occurs. Farming also makes up 79% of the acidification of our plant and 95% of the world’s eutrophication.
26% of all GHG anthropogenic emissions come directly from the food supply chain alone. Add 5% more to this for nonfood agriculture.
Sources of GHG emissions from animal agriculture, include feed production, its transport, deforestation for feed and livestock, enteric fermentation (cow farts), manure, aquaculture, processing emissions from slaughterhouse effluent, and the wastage of spoiled fresh animal products.
3. Water conservation
Agriculture accounts for 70% of global water use. Approximately 41% goes to growing livestock feed (for meat industry). By switching to a vegan diet, water usage can be drastically reduced.
4. Feeding 7.6B+ people may become more sustainable
Finding ways globally to feed humans is becoming increasingly difficult and a source on contention on the planet. Heavy processing and transportation across the globe is increasing steadily.
But our soils are at risk too. It’s not just the surface area that’s consumed for animal agriculture and their respective feed, it’s the soil that is leached of nutrients and poisoned with toxic chemicals and their by-products. If our soil continues to degrade at its current rate, we could experience a food production shortfall of 25% in 2050.
5. Protects ecological biodiversity and resilience
The most obvious here is the deforestation image that comes to mind, which destroys the trees, the soil, the animal species that call this ecosystem their home. Plants, animals, insects, pollinators, essential microbes, fungi…the list goes on. Every day, deforestation drives 135 species to extinction. 50,000 species are lost each year thanks to clearing space for animal farming.
Agriculture is extremely water and land intensive. Couple this with the use of pesticides, fertilizers and antibiotic use, creating run-off.
Farms contribute 79% to the acidification of our planet and 95% of all eutrophication. This means we’ve created 95% of the planet’s biological poisoning through the production and transportation of our food! Every stream, groundwater, lake, depth of ocean is impacted because of our choices we make at the table every day.
Switching to plant-based meats means you’ll be contributing 99% LESS land use than farming conventional meat. If we all went vegan, global farmland use would be reduced by 75%!
I’ve been savouring and enjoying plant-based all of my life. In the past 8 years, I’ve switched to a vegan diet. And did I miss cheese? Ha ha. No. Because I value my health, the planet and those cute little baby & mama cows. From eating a kind diet, I gained clearer skin, a healthier mindset, lost 20 pounds, and even gained some self-confidence along the way - knowing that eating a vegan diet is my path & choice (and having a stronghold on your morals is key to confidence).
If you’re considering the switch, introducing more plant-based options to the menu because you share some or one of these values, I have your back. DM me if you’d like to learn more about my 5-DAY PLANT-RICH nutrition challenge coming soon!!! (I’ll share a peek inside what you can expect).
Sources:
Petter, O. (2020, September 24). Veganism is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce our environmental impact, study finds. Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/veganism-environmental-impact-planet-reduced-plant-based-diet-humans-study-a8378631.html
Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science (New York, N.Y.), 360(6392), 987–992. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaq0216
