The Less Meat You Eat, the Smaller Your Carbon Footprint

As I have already enumerated in other postings, I am an unrepentant omnivore. I tried the vegan, the vegetarian, and even the pescatarian thing – none of them agreed with my body. However, after seeing all the science behind the carbon footprint of meat, I have reduced the amount of meat I eat. One of the latest studies done on this shows just how much of a difference my smaller meat intake can make. The new study was conducted by German scientists from the Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IOeW) and commissioned by the independent consumer protection group Foodwatch.

According to this study, a diet with an average intake of meat is responsible for producing in a year the same amount of greenhouse gases as driving a mid-sized car 2,956 miles. A vegetarian diet on the other hand is responsible for generating the same emissions as driving 1508 miles.

The numbers are based on emissions of greenhouse gases, including those produced by the animals themselves, from food production including manufacturing feed and fertilizer, the use of farmland, and transportation.

A completely vegan diet would cut your personal food carbon footprint more than 700%, to the equivalent of driving 391 miles.

The real kicker though, and something I never really thought of before, is how much of a difference it makes if your food is organic. According to the study, if all of that vegan food is organic, your food footprint is almost 1/17th of that of a meat-eater. The equivalents? Driving only 175 miles – that won’t even get me from San Francisco to Tahoe!