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According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, livestock production contributes about 18% of our total global greenhouse gas emissions, compared to an estimated 13.5% produced by all forms of transport combined, including air travel.
Producing one beefburger uses the same amount of fossil fuel as driving a small car 20 miles, and the same amount of water as 17 showers. 
If you want to reduce your carbon footprint, one of the simplest and most effective things you can do is to reduce the amount of red meat and dairy products you eat.
A paper published recently in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that, kilo for kilo, production of beef and pork contributes 30 times more CO² emissions than alternative sources of protein such as beans. Poultry and eggs were found to have much lower emissions than cheese, which was among the highest.
Compassion in World Farming estimate that, by halving their consumption of meat, the average UK household could cut emissions by more than they would achieve by halving their car use.
Global meat consumption has increased by two and a half times since 1970, and the number of farmed animals is predicted to double in the next fifty years. Over one quarter of the world’s total land mass is already being used for livestock grazing and over one third of the total world cereals production is fed directly to livestock and fish. More and more rainforest is being cleared to provide land – in the Amazon about 70% of previously forested land is used as grazing and much of the rest to produce animal feed.
16 kilos of grain is needed to produce one kilo of beef. The huge quantities used for animal feeds means that the remaining supplies of grain become too expensive for the people who depend on it to survive. About 1.2 billion people in the world suffer from hunger, while another 1.2 billion are obese.
Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has called on us all to take personal responsibility for the impacts of our own consumption. “Give up meat for one day [a week] initially, and decrease it from there,” he asks.
There are campaigns for meat-free days in the US and Australia, and the city of Ghent in Belgium has declared Thursday a voluntary meat-free day when restaurants, canteens and schools throughout the city will offer vegetarian meals. In the UK Paul McCartney has now launched the ‘Meat-Free Monday‘ campaign to encourage us all to reduce our meat consumption by having at least one meat-free day a week.
It takes at least six times the amount of land to feed a meat eater than to feed a vegetarian. In the UK just 2% of the population is vegetarian, but although none of us really need to eat meat every day, most people simply aren’t prepared to give it up altogether. Having one or two meatless days a week is an easy way to make a difference, and changing to a diet containing more beans, nuts, fruit and vegetables can also improve your health and lower the risk of heart disease, diabetes and some cancers.
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Posted under food, global warming
Research by WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme) shows that in the UK we are throwing away one third of the food we buy, most of which could have been eaten. In effect, for every three bags of shopping we bring home, we put one straight into the bin.
According to WRAP, 6.7 million tonnes of wasted food goes to landfill in the UK every year, at a total cost of over £8 billion – that’s equal to £420 per year for the average family!
Sending food to landfill is not only wasteful and expensive, but also produces emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas which, molecule for molecule, traps 25 times more of the sun’s heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. When bacteria break down organic matter in the absence of oxygen they produce methane, so as waste is compressed in landfill sites the organic materials decompose anaerobically, producing methane gas.
In 2007 methane accounted for 8 per cent of the UK’s total CO2 equivalent greenhouse gas emissions, and over 40% of this came from landfill sites. More than a third of the waste collected from UK homes is organic kitchen or garden waste.
So what are the alternatives?
Obviously we need to waste much less in the first place. Love Food Hate Waste has lots of ideas and advice on buying and using food more efficiently.
A few councils have now introduced Green Waste Recycling Schemes which provide a kerbside collection for garden waste and uncooked food waste such as vegetable peelings and tea bags. The materials are then processed into compost. This is an excellent solution, although you can’t dispose of any leftover meat, fish or cooked food waste this way.
If you have a garden, home composting is a good solution. This is really very easy – you don’t have to be an expert gardener. Garden waste and uncooked kitchen waste such as vegetable peelings, egg shells, tea bags and coffee grounds are ideal ingredients for making compost. With not much effort you could soon be producing your own home-made compost which will improve your soil and reduce the need for artificial fertilizers. It’s an easy, cheap and practical way to manage your waste and improve your garden too. For more information, see my page on composting. You can find details of which local councils supply reduced priced home composting bins at recyclenow. Or mygreenerhome.co.uk stock a good basic wooden garden composter made from FSC certified timber.
The main problem in home composting of kitchen waste is how to deal with meat and fish, dairy products and leftover cooked food. If you mix this waste in with your ordinary compost it will smell and attract flies and rats, so it needs to be composted in a different way. There are several systems for doing this:
This is a two step system in which the waste is firstly fermented in airtight bins and then composted, so it works along with a normal composting system, turning leftover meat, fish, bread, etc into nutrient rich compost without creating smells or attracting flies or vermin. As the materials are collected they are sprinkled with a bran based material, Bokashi, which contains a culture of friendly micro organisms. When the Bokashi bin is full it is closed up and left for two weeks to ferment. Generally two containers are used so one can be left fermenting while the other is being filled. After fermentation the waste needs to be added to an ordinary compost bin or wormery or buried in the garden to complete the composting process. There is more information on using this system on my Bokashi page.
Bokashi bins are available from the recycle works.
Worms are very effective and hygienic composters, and a wormery will compost most types of leftover food scraps, shredded newspapers, the contents of your vacuum cleaner, or garden weeds, producing especially rich compost and concentrated liquid fertiliser. There are various designs available – the easiest to use have several layers of trays which the worms move up through leaving compost ready for use in the lower trays (see the Worm Works Wormery at My Greener Home). The Recycle Works sell wooden worm bins.
These are really good efficient systems, although the idea of dealing with worms doesn’t appeal to everyone. For more information see my page on Worm composting.
These will dispose of all food waste, cooked or uncooked, including meat, fish, bones, dairy products, peelings and fruit . There are two types of digestor, the Green Cone and the Green Johanna, and both use natural processes to break the food down without producing methane.
Green Cone – this small food digester needs to be installed in a sunny part of the garden as it uses solar heat to break down food waste into water, carbon dioxide, and just a small residue of solids. It isn’t suitable for garden waste, and doesn’t produce any compost. It’s easy to set up, very simple to use, and it will dispose of most food waste.
Green Johanna. This is a more expensive option, but is a very simple, easy to use compost bin which will dispose of all waste food and garden waste too, and the unit is 
completely rodent proof. It needs to be installed in a shady part of the garden and is designed to be filled with two parts food waste mixed with one third garden waste, working by a ‘hot composting’ method which produces good rich compost. Available from mygreenerhome.co.uk – see also their page of Green Johanna FAQs.
Green Cone.com has a search facility to check if your local council is offering either the Green Cone or Green Johanna at subsidised prices.
To help decide which would be most appropriate for you, see Which Food Waste Digester, Green Cone or Green Johanna at YouTube.
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Posted under compost, food, waste
