Reduce Your Carbon Hoofprint

Collectively, the actions we’re taking to address climate change are not enough to combat the devastation we’re causing our planet. Biking to work, observing Meatless Monday, and giving up straws rather than fish – to save fish – are nice, but woefully insufficient. The elephant in the room (who is plant-based, by the way) knows we must cut animals and their bodily fluids from our diets to effectively address climate change.

Researchers at the University of Oxford looked at food systems around the world and found that cutting meat and dairy “could reduce an individual’s carbon footprint from food by up to 73 per cent.”1 Their data came from 570 studies, 139 authors and 38,700 farms in 119 countries.2

There are also compelling environmental reasons to go plant-based:

• Agriculture, driven largely by land cleared for grazing and feed crops, is the biggest cause of wildlife habitat loss worldwide.3

• Livestock produce about 12% of all human-caused greenhouse gases, roughly 6.2 billion tonnes a year.4

• Meat, dairy, eggs and farmed fish use 83% of the world’s farmland but provide only 18% of our calories and 37% of our protein.2

• “Worldwide, at least 50% of grain is fed to livestock.”6

• “You save more water by not eating 450 grams of hamburger meat than you would by not showering for two months.”7

• Farm runoff down the Mississippi creates a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico every summer. In 2025 it covered about 4,400 square miles, roughly the size of Connecticut.8

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Sources:

1 https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/veganism-environmental-impact-planet-reduced-plant-based-diet-humans-study-a8378631.html

2 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aaq0216

3 https://www.ipbes.net/global-assessment

4 https://openknowledge.fao.org/items/d70525c5-59fd-4550-8d8d-b22359b8170d

5 https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/billions-of-chickens-ducks-and-pigs-are-slaughtered-for-meat-every-year

6 https://www.cowspiracy.com/facts

7 https://www.instagram.com/p/CT2hbOvpugo/

8 https://coastalscience.noaa.gov/?p=97413

9 https://ideas.ted.com/which-plant-based-milk-is-best-for-the-planet/