Posts Tagged ‘food’
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#3 Green Britain Day - 4 easy steps to reduce your food footprint
Food
The amount of chicken we eat has doubled since 25 years ago. Not only that, but our individual consumption has increased by nearly 10kg since 1961 to 79.6kg in 2002. This high demand means eating chicken has a high impact on the environment at every stage in which the chicken gets to us.
We are not saying to stop eating chicken or other meat all together – just be aware of the impact it has. The herding, looking after the animals and transportation all contribute to CO2 emissions.
UK households throw away about 8.3 million tonnes of food and drink every year.Food waste per household is estimated to be at £50 a month – imagine what you could do with that amount of money!
Although we are consuming more chicken it is in fact more environmentally friendlier to eat the little creatures than say eating beef. For every 1kg of beef produced, the same amount of CO2 is emitted as producing 7kg of chicken!
What can you do to stop this impact?
1. Reduce the amount of waste thrown away from your household - Because there is only so much landfill space available to dispose of unwanted food we have to make sure that we don’t run out of this space.
2. Plan your shopping before you buy So if you don’t need to buy something don’t buy it until it’s needed. This is important because then you can make the most out of all the food that you have and need.
3. Leftovers are not waste! - Be creative with your food and make something really delicious while saving the environment.
4. Store food in your freezer and reduce the need to throw food away once it is out of date.Think of it as food but frozen in time – it’s as young as the day it was frozen!
Read #1 Green Britain Day- 5 easy steps to reduce your fashion footprint
Read #2 Green Britain Day- 6 easy steps to reduce your travel footprint
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London EcoBarbie #3 Food
LONDON ECO BARBIE –
Life’s not fair but at least my pants are..By Amy Whitney
Raring to go, lunch packed using left overs saves waste. Gloating to fellow course mates I save the fiver they fritter away on lunch, definitely justifies the handbags.
Dinner is homemade soya mince chilli, dubious whether rainforests are exterminated to provide for the world’s vegetarians I investigate. “Brazil the worlds second largest soy exporter responds to surging demand converting rainforest into agricultural land, impacting environmental stability” (Story 2006).
I refuse to touch red meat, currently burdening our NHS with CHD victims. Switching to vegetarian food lessens cattle methane emissions and reduces grain prices for the worlds poorest.“Livestock production accounts for fifth of total greenhouse gas emissions.” (McMichael 2007). Vegetarianism decreases the West’s impact on climate change; however I cannot quite shake a love for seafood, worsening future aquatic biodiversity. Sometimes you cannot win.
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22nd JANUARY - Appetite for Action Day
As part of appetite for action day, on the 22nd January, all Climate Squad and Global Action Plan staff are pledging 1 (or for those keen of us, 6) actions to reduce the impact of our food for 1 day!
And you have the opportunity to take part too:
Possible actions are as follows…
1. use a reusable mug for the day (or 1 mug for the day)
2. choose food with no packaging
3. have packed lunch in a reusable container
4. recycle any bottle or drinks can you use
5. buy organic foods
6. buy food that is in season … see the following website for ideas – http://www.eattheseasons.co.uk/weekbyweek/1.htm
7. use a reusable bag and reuse plastic
8. choose the most locally produced food items
9. drink tap water instead of a bottled drink
10. have a meat free day
To take part, e-mail the actions you pledge to make to – climate.squad@globalactionplan.org.uk
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