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[Eating for the Earth - Five things you can do]
One of the greatest gifts you can give to the planet is to choose to become vegetarian, or even better a vegan.
– Julia Butterfly Hill
Beyond Earth Hour - A planet at steak
[ecological footprint]

Ecological footprint

A vegetarian diet requires only a half acre of land – seven times less land than a meat-based diet.

See Meat production's environmental toll.

Quiz: How green is your food?

Source: BBC Nov 2004.

1. The energy used to import a kg of fresh spinach from California to the UK is equivalent to running a 100 watt light bulb for:

A: 1 year
B: 1 month
C: 2 weeks
D: 1 week

2. It takes 3.5 times as much of what to produce a litre of non-organic milk compared to a litre of organic milk?

A: Energy
B: Water
C: Fertilizer
D: Land

3. A typical British family of four emits 4.2 tonnes of C02 from their house each year and 4.4 tonnes from their car. How much is emitted from the production, packaging and distribution of the food they eat?

A: 1 tonne
B: 2 tonnes
C: 4 tonnes
D: 8 tonnes

  

 

Answers:

1. B
2. A – Organic milk comes from cows which are fed on pasture which is not treated with fertilizers and pesticides. Much of the extra energy used in the production of non-organic milk is energy used in the production of the fertilizer.
3. D

Ontario Vegetarian Food Bank partnership

image: Canned Tomatoes

We are currently accepting non-perishable food items at our Resource Centre.
Food & the Environment
Green Living Show a success!
Monday, 28 April 2008


Jade and Nimisha at our table on Friday, April 25, 2008. See below for another photo.

Despite the Toronto transit strike over the weekend, our table at the Green Living Show was a huge success. A thousand factsheets explaining the connection between meat and the environment were handed out, well over 100 people signed up to take the Veggie Challenge, and we went through two boxes of Vegetarian Starter Kits.

Our large table banner titled A Planet at "Steak"! prominently told show visitors that:

Livestock production accounts for 30% of the entire land surface of the planet and 18% of climate change.

– Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN

Ed Begley, Jr, one of the featured speakers at the show, gave a talk entitled: "Live Simply So Others Can Simply Live" that touched on the green reasons to be vegetarian.

Begley, an actor and activist, is known for turning up at Hollywood events on his bicycle. His 37-year journey to become an environmentalist began in 1970. Around the same time, he became more or less vegetarian. In 1992, he switched to a vegan diet.

"I am [vegetarian] for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the environmental impact ...

"It's simply efficiency. And the health ramifications - I have never heard, and please tell me if you've heard about it, of a cardiologist doing bypass surgery, doing open heart surgery, or anything like that, and ever pulling out a piece of broccoli out of somebody's arteries."

– Ed Begley, Jr, quoted from his website


Wanda and Nimisha at our table on Friday.