Why Eating Less Meat Is Good For The Environment

We’ve all heard it many times before: eating less meat is one of the most effective ways to save the state of our planet. But exactly, how is it?

The meat industry uses up considerably more land than plant-based foods; this is due to animal-based products requiring additional space to grow animal feed. Beef, in particular, is recognised as the most land-intensive of all food products and was responsible for 71% of total deforestation in South America between 1990 and 2005. To this day, the production of beef continues to be one of the main drivers of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. Soybeans are another major cause of deforestation and the bulk of this produce is actually used for livestock feed.

A recent University of Oxford Study claimed that if everybody adopted a plant-based diet, there could be a 75% decrease in land used for food. This land could instead be used to grow crops which would enable us to feed a larger percentage of the world’s population.

Animal agriculture releases high amounts of greenhouse gases into our atmosphere, partly due to livestock producing methane when passing gas as well as the nitrous oxide that emits from their waste. There are also many indirect ways that the meat industry contributes to climate change; for example, when trees are cut down to make space for livestock, carbon that the trees have stored is then released into the atmosphere.

The Amazon rainforest is aptly known as the Lungs of the Planet as it produces around 20% of our oxygen. Unfortunately, this landscape is under threat primarily due to cattle ranching. What’s scarier is that the demand for meat is still rising along with the growth of the human population.

Adopting a diet that is rich in plants and low in animal products is one of the most effective ways of reducing an individual's carbon footprint, even more so than reducing the amount that you drive or take flights!

With deforestation, comes the threat of animal extinction. While the news headlines are often saturated with stories of climate change, the threat to biodiversity has become somewhat of an overlooked issue, and this issue has only managed to increase in severity over the years. As a matter of fact, WWF recently found that 60% of global biodiversity loss is down to meat-based diets.

A few years ago, scientists warned us of a sixth mass extinction that is being driven by human activity - predominantly through overconsumption of resources. However, if more people move towards a plant-based diet we can begin to rehabilitate the land that is currently used for meat farming and turn it back into habitats for vulnerable species and crops for edible plants.

Meat has a much higher water footprint in comparison to crops. For example, 15,415 litres of water is needed to produce 1 KG of beef, whereas only 287 litres is needed to produce 1 KG of potatoes. There was a time when we were all advised to take shorter showers and avoid letting the tap run for long periods of time, however, we now know that a plant-based diet is one of the most effective ways to reduce an individual’s water footprint.

Not only does the meat industry use up an unnecessary amount of water, but it can pollute it, too. Waste from factory farms consists of lots of nasty stuff such as animal waste, antibiotics, and chemicals that often overflow and leak into water supplies and rural habitats. Factory farm waste is known to create dead zones and kill wildlife and plant species, as well as harm the health of residents living nearby.