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| Eating Green |
I chose to do the Eating Green Calculator to see the amount of environmental burden my lifestyle causes. According to this, I use up 1.1 acres of grain and grass in one year, in order to feed the animals that are used to make the food I consume. I considered this a lot until I saw my results for the amount of manure created by these animals was 7,458 pounds. I was surprised that only .2 pounds of pesticide were used to grow the animal feed, that seemed like a pretty low amount until I sat that 26.7 pounds of fertilizer is actually used to grow animal feed the feed the animals. After improving my diet I found that actually .6 acres of land could be grown from decreasing some of my servings, my pesticide use decrease to .1 pounds, fertilizer fell to 15.2 and manure fell to 3915. If everyone could improve there diet and eat more locally grown fruits and vegetables our environment would be so much better off. Changing this would actually lower cholesterol by 49 milligrams, which is a good factor for me because high cholesterol runs in my family.
What this really means to me is that by just decreasing my servings of meats and dairy I can help the environment over a year. By just decreasing 1 or 2 servings from these categories went from using acres of land to actually growing back land. Its amazing to see how much impact it would have if everyone just made these small changes. We could preserve so much more of our planet and also be much healthier people.
Although I did not write about this survey, I took it too. I was surprised at the amount of manure created by the animals I eat too! I had never realized the impact of eating meat had on the environment until this class.
ReplyDeleteI would have to agree with both of you. I did not do this survey either, but I was also shocked on how "bad" eating meat is and the implications it has on the environment.
ReplyDeleteI'm totally with you gals. I think of myself as a big meat eater and I can't believe how much of an impact it has.
ReplyDeleteIt's crazy to think that a small change can make such a huge impact. Though I think changing my meat and dairy intake will be rather hard for me since I like both so much!
ReplyDeleteThat's great you have been able to realize how much of an impact a single person may have on the environment. Now for the challenge, how and when are you going to make these behavior changes?
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