Not Going Vegan to Save the Planet
Yes, you could keep eating meat.
More people are becoming vegan* in response to climate change. The link between food and carbon footprint has led to calls for people to adopt a plant based diet to save the planet [1]. I was convinced by the science to go plant based. For me it’s a way of reducing my personal carbon footprint and taking action on climate change. Recently climate and diet has been getting a lot more media attention and I’ve mostly been encouraged by the conversations this has sparked.
But people often discount the barriers to adopting a vegan diet and seldom provide constructive alternatives. So we’re going to discuss ways you can reduce your carbon footprint even if veganism doesn’t seem like an option.
But First: A Crash Course on the Science
All food has a carbon footprint. The footprint can be broken down into 3 main areas.
- Land use change
- Farming and animal feed
- Distribution (processing, transport, retail, packaging)
Land use change: If a forest is cleared for cattle grazing or a cocoa/coffee plantation, then that forest is no longer removing carbon from the atmosphere. This increases the food’s carbon footprint. But if you plant a fruit/nut grove in an area that was previously clear, this reforestation reduces the food’s carbon footprint. The majority of land clearing globally is done for livestock, as opposed to crops [2], and this adds to the carbon footprint of meat.
Farming and animal feed: Farming crops releases CO2 through tilling, synthetic fertilizers, irrigation, etc. But this footprint is typically small. For meat, all animal feed consumed over the animal’s lifetime gets added to its carbon footprint. Animals such as cows, sheep and goats also burp A LOT of methane when they digest their food. Methane is a greenhouse gas 21 to 84 times more powerful than CO2 [3]. This makes the carbon footprint of red meat in particular very large.
Distribution: Emissions related to processing, transportation, retail and packaging are generally much smaller than land use change and farming. Generally speaking, transport makes up only 6% of our food’s carbon footprint [2 & 5]. There is one exception: produce transported by plane. This is because air freight emits around 50 times more CO2 than sea freight [4]. This typically only affects highly perishable fresh fruit and vegetables such as asparagus, green beans and berries. Globally only 0.16% of food is air freighted [4]. Most products, including avocados and almonds, are less perishable and come by boat. Working out what food comes by plane is tricky but as a rule of thumb, if it has a short shelf life, comes from far away, and is marketed on its ‘freshness’, it probably had to be flown to you. Avoiding air freighted food makes a difference but generally speaking, eating locally has very little effect on your carbon footprint.
This graph shows the carbon footprint of different foods. You can see how avoiding meat and animal products results in a lower carbon footprint. Most plant based products have a carbon footprint 10 to 50 times less than most animal based products. Based on this, you can see why it makes sense to encourage people to adopt a vegan diet to dramatically reduce their carbon footprint.
Barriers to Veganism
If you’re already vegan, you might think it’s an easy way for people to take action on climate change. But the general public would disagree. Studies show only 9% of people consider veganism to be ‘easy’ [7]. Food has great cultural significance, and family recipes are often cherished. When you ask someone to change their diet, you’re asking them to change deeply rooted patterns of behavior. Many people try to change their diet for health reasons but fall back into their old habits [8]. People struggle to change their diet even when it is for their own direct benefit. So how likely are they to stick with a diet that is for the benefit of the planet? Vegans do stick with it, but realistically that’s only around 0.5% of the world’s population [9]. I think we need to start somewhere else.
A Viable Alternative
What else can you do to reduce your diet’s carbon footprint besides going vegan? The chart above is based on a study [10] that looked at 140 countries and measured the impact of 9 different diet options. These options were compared to the country’s baseline diet, which was scaled to 2,300 kcal to account for different countries eating more or less than the global average.
The 9 diets modelled were:
- Meatless day (1 meatless day per week)
- Low red meat (maximum of 350 g cooked weight per week)
- No dairy
- No red meat (no cow, sheep, goat or pig meat)
- Pescetarian (no red meat or poultry, only seafood)
- Vegetarian (can eat dairy and eggs)
- 2/3 vegan (i.e. 2 out of 3 meals a day were vegan)
- Low food chain (protein from insects, forage fish and mollusks)
- Vegan (plant based diet)
Based on the data, going vegan would save 1,426kg of CO2 per year. That is a lot. It would take someone about 5 years of committing to a low red meat diet to have the same impact as being vegan for a year.
But think of it another way. Assuming you live in a family of 4, it would only take the 4 of you eating a low red meat around 1.5 years of to offset as much as 1 person being vegan for a year. Alternatively, assume both sets of grandparents are also on board. Now the 8 of you would save around 1,872kg of CO2 per year which is more than just one person in this group going vegan.
Taking action as a group has several benefits. First, moderate actions are more likely to stick because they are less of a change. Second, the group acting together creates a supportive environment that sustains that behavior in the long term. And in the long term, making a commitment you can keep will have a bigger impact than trying veganism for a while and giving up, or not taking any action at all.
The chart below shows different ways people could work together and have a much bigger impact than a single person acting alone. These options include: a couple being 2/3 vegan, a family of 8 being low red meat, a family of 4 being no red meat or vegetarian, or an office of 21 people committing to Meatless Mondays.
Moving Forward
It could be more achievable, maintainable and influential for people to commit to less ambitious diet goals while bringing their family and friends along for the journey. As more people do this, it will normalize people eating less meat and increase vegan options. In turn, more options will make it easier for people to choose and stick with a vegan diet.
This is the path my household took towards veganism. We started out by reducing our meat intake. Then we became mostly vegetarian, but still occasionally ate meat when we went out or on special occasions like Christmas. Now we eat a plant based diet at least 99% of the time.
We need to act on climate change. Adopting a vegan diet is the most effective way of reducing your food’s carbon footprint. But if that seems too daunting, don’t let that stop you from taking steps in the right direction. Do what you can to reduce your carbon footprint and encourage others to do the same. Together, you might just have a bigger impact than if you try to go it alone.
Note:
In this article the terms ‘vegan’ and ‘plant based diet’ are used interchangeably for simplicity as ‘vegan’ is the term used on products and menus. Strictly speaking, it would be more accurate to use the term ‘plant based diet’ throughout, as veganism is a philosophy of ethics encompassing more than diet with broader lifestyle implications.
References
1. M. Springmann et al. 2018, “Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits” Nature, Vol 562, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0594-0
2. H. Ritchie, 2020, “Environmental impacts of food production”, published online at OurWorldInData.org, https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food
3. J. McDonald, 2018, “How Potent Is Methane?” FactCheck.org, https://www.factcheck.org/2018/09/how-potent-is-methane/
4. H. Ritchie, 2020, “Very little of global food is transported by air; this greatly reduces the climate benefits of eating local”, published online at OurWorldinData.org, https://ourworldindata.org/food-transport-by-mode
5. V. Sandström et al. 2018, “The role of trade in the greenhouse gas footprints of EU diets” Global Food Security, Volume 19, Pages 48–55, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211912418300361
6. J. Poore et al. 2018, “Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers”, Science, 360(6392), 987–992, https://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6392/987
7. C. Bryant, 2019, “We Can’t Keep Meating Like This: Attitudes towards Vegetarian and Vegan Diets in the United Kingdom”, Sustainability, 11, 6844 https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/23/6844
8. Kapur, et al. 2008, Barriers to changing dietary behaviour. The Journal of the Association of Physicians of India. 56. 27–32. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5380117_Barriers_to_changing_dietary_behavior
9. Lane, 2020, Veganbits, https://veganbits.com/vegan-demographics/
10. B. Kim et al. 2020, “Country-specific dietary shifts to mitigate climate and water crises”, Global Environmental Change, Volume 62, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.05.010
