Going vegetarian can help save the world!

You may be wondering, “How can one person that is going vegetarian help the world?” Well, maybe if only one person decides to go vegetarian it might not have a very big impact on the world but if all of us did, it could really help the environment.

The Do One Thing (DOT) project is a project for students to change something in their lifestyles during four weeks so that they can help the environment.

For the DOT project I decided to go vegetarian. As a Latina, this was a very hard decision because I’ve eaten meat my whole life. Since I’m used to eating meat I decided that going vegetarian would be the right thing to do for the DOT project because it was something that would make me go out of my comfort zone. Also, for me things like taking shorter showers and composting seemed like they wouldn’t be as hard to accomplish. In our science class we watched this documentary, Cowspiracy, was about how the consumption of cow meat is one of the main reasons climate change is happening.

Agricultural practices have been found to have negative impacts on the environment. For example, animal methane, land consumption, and fossil fuel usage all happens due to meat production. Even though carbon dioxide (CO2) can impact climate negatively, methane (CH4), is a greenhouse gas produced by cows and it is far more dangerous than CO2 since it absorbs heat a lot more effectively. Also, methane is 84 times more potent than CO2.

Even though, this is a challenge for me because I am used to eating meat, I am looking forward to helping the environment and helping to stop climate change because if we humans don’t do it then who will?