Meatless Monday: An Environmentally Friendly Diet
Have you ever heard of Meatless Monday? Since several U.S. municipalities adopted the idea, it has become a public movement. However, I don’t think it is as well known as it could be. Meatless Monday is the non-profit program launched in 2009, suggested by the British musician James Paul McCartney. It became a worldwide act to encourage people not to eat meat at least once a week, in order to slow climate change, preserve natural resources, improve nation’s health, and advocate for animal welfare. This article will focus on one particular aspect of Meatless Monday and that is how it connects to climate change.
Try skipping meat for one day a week to reduce your carbon footprint and improve your health” By Paul, Mary, and Stella McCartney.
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Are you familiar with the “environmental destruction of food”? An example of this is shrimp; Vietnam people cut down rain forests to create shrimp aquaculture ponds just for their benefit. Another one of these is beef, which is regarded as the most serious environmentally destructive food, due to the creation of additional farmland. Besides the direct destruction of the terrain, cows also affect the atmosphere, producing more carbon footprints while alive, than when turned to beef.
Cow’s excrement problem
A cow’s excrement produces gas when are decomposing. Excrement normally becomes the fertilizer for plants. However, so many cows are in a narrow farm, thus those gasses are causing abundant pollution in the atmosphere. Also, this problem can be the cause of diseases for people because germs sometimes come from the excrement.
The belch of ruminants’ contain methane gas, which happens to be one of biggest causes of climate change. Because of the number of livestock (not only cows but sheep as well), this effect is regarded more seriously than ever before. Methane gas is 20 times more harmful to the environment than the same amount of carbon dioxide.
When they become meat
When people dismantle meat, factories also produce carbon footprints, which exist as industrial exhaust gases. This happens when they transport huge amounts of meat products. Furthermore, gas will be produced in a process of discarding industrial waste.
The cases suggested in this article were very simple, however, they gradually cause more environmental destruction. Surprisingly, when I interviewed four people and took a survey of 20 people, no one knew this Meatless Monday Act, even though some U.S. municipalities adopted it as a public movement. The inserted podcast below shows what GC people think of Meatless Monday.
How about you, after reading this article and listening to the podcast? Have you ever thought of being environmentally friendly by improving your diet? Not only for environment, but it also might be helpful to cut meat out at least one day of the week in order to improve your health. Thank you for reading.