The Cows Have It!

This week's post comes from the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine.

There has never been a better time to go vegetarian. Mounting evidence suggests that meat-based diets are not only unhealthy, but that just about every aspect of meat production—from grazing-related loss of cropland, to the inefficiencies of feeding vast quantities of water and grain to cattle, to pollution from “factory farms”—is an environmental disaster with wide and sometimes catastrophic consequences.

There are 20 billion head of livestock on Earth, more than triple the number of people. According to the Worldwatch Institute, global livestock population has increased 60 percent since 1961, and the number of fowl being raised for food has nearly quadrupled in the same time period, from 4.2 billion to 15.7 billion.

The 4.8 pounds of grain fed to cattle to make one pound of beef represents a colossal waste of resources in a world teeming with hungry and malnourished people. According to Vegfam, a 10-acre farm can support 60 people growing soy, 24 people growing wheat, 10 people growing corn—but only two raising cattle.

Food First’s Frances Moore Lappé says to imagine sitting down to an eight-ounce steak. “Then imagine the room filled with 45 to 50 people with empty bowls... For the feed cost of your steak, each of their bowls could be filled with a full cup of cooked cereal grains.” Harvard nutritionist Jean Mayer says that reducing U.S. meat production 10 percent would free grain to feed 60 million people.

U.S. animal farms generate billion of tons of animal waste every year, which the Environmental Protection Agency says pollute our waterways more than all other industrial sources combined. The infamous 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill dumped 11 million gallons of oil into Prudoe Bay, but the relatively unknown 1995 New River hog waste spill in North Carolina poured 25 million gallons of excrement into the water, killing 14 million fish and closing 364,000 acres of shell fishing beds. Hog waste spills have caused the rapid spread of Pfiesteria piscicida, which has killed a billion fish in North Carolina alone.

Other than polluting water, beef production alone uses more water than is used in growing our entire fruit and vegetable crop. And over a third of all raw materials and fossil fuels consumed in the U.S. are used in animal production. Meat also increases our carbon footprints. According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, livestock around the world contribute more greenhouse gases (mostly methane) to the atmosphere—18 percent of our total output—than emissions from all the world’s cars and trucks.

“There is no question that the choice to become a vegetarian or lower meat consumption is one of the most positive lifestyle changes a person could make in terms of reducing one’s personal impact on the environment,” says Christopher Flavin of the Worldwatch Institute. “The resource requirements and environmental degradation associated with a meat-based diet are very substantial.”

CONTACTS: Food First, www.foodfirst.org; UN Food and Agriculture Organization, www.fao.org; Worldwatch Institute, www.worldwatch.org.

GOT AN ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTION? Send it to: EarthTalk, c/o E/The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; submit it at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/thisweek/, or e-mail: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php.

Going Paperless

DO YOUR PART!!

Did you know that a 2007 report from Javelin Strategy & Research and sponsored by CheckFree, now part of Fiserv Inc., found that if every American household viewed and paid bills online, it would:

• Save 2.3 million tons of wood, or 16.5 million trees
• Reduce fuel consumption by 26 million BTUs, enough energy to provide residential power to the city of San Francisco, Calif., for an entire year
• Reduce toxic air pollutants by 3.9 billion pounds of CO2 equivalents (greenhouse gases), akin to having 355,015 fewer cars on the road
• Reduce toxic wastewater by 13 billion gallons, enough to fill 19,846 swimming pools
• Lower by 1.6 billion pounds the solid waste generated, equal to 56,000 fully loaded garbage trucks
• Remove 8.5 million particulates and 12.6 million nitrogen oxides from the air, on par with getting 763,000 buses and 48,000 18-wheelers off the streets
• Save landfill space and curb the amount of toxic chemicals—including methane gas—released into the atmosphere as paper decomposes. Methane gas has 21 times the heat-trapping power of carbon monoxide and is believed to be a major contributor to global warming
  

By using electronic transactions, you can save trees, and minimize transportation costs for transporting bills, statements and payments. Following are some ideas on how to cut down on your paper bills in the coming year.

1. Make a commitment to pay your bills online. This not only saves the paper used in checks and envelopes, and the transportation resources to physically move them from place to place - it also saves you 41 cents per bill in postage.
2. Take it one step further and ask your billing companies to send your bill to be viewed and paid to your financial institution’s or billing company’s web site. Reduce clutter by turning off paper bills you no longer need to receive by mail once you get into the habit of viewing and paying online.
3. And while you’re at it, ask your financial institution to send your statements electronically. Not only will you save paper, you will save time that you would have otherwise spent filing and storing. If you need a hard copy, you can print what you need.
4. Ask investment and mutual fund companies that send you annual reports and prospectuses to notify you when the reports are available online, instead of sending paper copies in the mail. You will save reams of paper each year.
5. Choose not to receive a paper receipt at the ATM machine. You will save paper, and with online banking, you don’t need the receipts. You can see your transactions daily and will have better control of your finances.
Hug a tree, not paper :)
Beth