go meatless

You may be cleaning with all natural cleaners, sleeping on organic sheets, gardening with organic methods and more, but if you’re not limiting the meat you eat, you’re not living as green as you could be.

Meat is an eco-baddie:

• According to Sustainable Table, and plenty of other sources, meat production causes some major distress to the environment. Such as…
• Animal waste produced by industrial farms release greenhouse gasses into the air.
• Trucks that carry that meat and animals to and from stores also cost the world significant amounts of fossil fuels to power the trucks.
• Animals, such as cows, are often fed low doses of antibiotics which can contribute to antibiotic-resistant bacteria in humans. Learn more about additives in meat such as hormones and antibiotics.
• Destruction of rural communities throughout the country happen due to animal farming.
• Animals on farms eat a huge amount of grains; in fact according to Environmental Nutrition it takes 7 tons of grains to produce just one ton of beef, and most of those grains aren’t grown organically so that’s a whole other pesticide issue.

I’m not even going to get into how animals on these farms are treated, because that’s a whole other level of badness.

So if you’re eating lots o’ meat, your footprint isn’t all that small. Cut out a few meat meals a week. Go nuts, cut most of them even. If you must eat meat go organic and read about meats that are somewhat more eco-friendly.

Learn more:

• Vegetarian meals for meat eaters
• Here’s One Meatless Meal I like.