Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth

[Baronage-Phase]

You can't quantify how good a movie is, but you can say with absolute confidence that Die Hard is a better movie than Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

That.....is a matter of opinion.
Sniff...

 

[8ball]

I heard on the world service that 75% of the food produced in the UK market ends up in landfill :/

This doesn’t seem plausible. I know it’s a lot but 75%??!?

 

[Ralph Llama]

I think lazythursday has got it right as 1/3. I must of misheard it. Am having a look now.

 

[8ball]

Then my 'impact on earth' is also unquantifiable, and this thread is pointless.

This is a very odd way of thinking. Your effect on the lives of people around you is also fundamentally unquantifiable but you don’t take that as a reason to be a total anti-social cunt to everybody in sight.

Aside from on urban, obv.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

If you eat skip food you can actually reduce your carbon footprint

I have friends who claim to get most of their food this way. A lot of the time it doesn't actually go in the skip. Some of the co-op groceries re-route food away from waste by giving it to grocery workers, volunteers, or friends of people who work there.

 

[8ball]

That.....is a matter of opinion.
Sniff...

It’s a matter of *everyone’s* opinion.

 

[Ralph Llama]

According to these folks, Food AWARE - Putting surplus food to work for the benefit of communities , it is a third of all food produced wasted, not 75% like wot I said

I have friends who claim to get most of their food this way. A lot of the time it doesn't actually go in the skip. Some of the co-op groceries re-route food away from waste by giving it to grocery workers, volunteers, or friends of people who work there.

It does seem like the big guys are starting to recycle/ redistribute food waste which is great ... but TBH, I was absolutely gutted when M&S started doing it

 

[kabbes]

You can't quantify how good a movie is

Metacritic is in a lot of trouble then.

 

[8ball]

It does seem like the big guys are starting to recycle/ redistribute food waste which is great ... but TBH, I was absolutely gutted when M&S started doing it

Why?
Had you secured exclusive access to their skip?

 

[Ralph Llama]

Naaaaa, just used to climb over their gates and sneak up to the skips hiding from the store workers.... or do them at night. These days I have to put up with Waitrose food, which is not quite as nice
The last time i was in Dublin, M&S still had skips full of goodness..... me and me misses got banned from Dublin Central Park for feeding the Romanian street kids by a parky... who when asked if he was a fascist replied yes! So my misses kicked him in the nuts and we ran off
That was about 4 years ago though.

Edit... oh I see what you mean LOL

 

[SpookyFrank]

Naaaaa, just used to climb over their gates and sneak up to the skips hiding from the store workers.... or do them at night. These days I have to put up with Waitrose food, which is not quite as nice
The last time i was in Dublin, M&S still had skips full of goodness..... me and me misses got banned from Dublin Central Park for feeding the Romanian street kids by a parky... who when asked if he was a fascist replied yes! So my misses kicked him in the nuts and we ran off
That was about 4 years ago though.

Edit... oh I see what you mean LOL

Parkies, didn't know they existed outside of the Beano tbh.

 

[Ralph Llama]

They have them in Dublin, and they are not very nice.

Park warden suspended for Muslim comment

 

[Jeff Robinson]

‘Thousands of British cattle reared for supermarket beef are being fattened in industrial-scale units where livestock have little or no access to pasture.

‘Research by the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has established that the UK is now home to a number of industrial-scale fattening units with herds of up to 3,000 cattle at a time being held in grassless pens for extended periods rather than being grazed or barn-reared.’

Revealed: industrial-scale beef farming comes to the UK

 

[8ball]

Yeah, I read that the other day. A glimpse of our post-Brexit future.

 

[sealion]

Yeah, I read that the other day. A glimpse of our post-Brexit future.

It's happening now, under eu law. Another rabble rousing guardian article.

 

[8ball]

It's happening now, under eu law. Another rabble rousing guardian article.

Yes, it's starting. Let's see how it ramps up once our regulations get diluted further.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Happy Earth Overshoot Day. Here's a graphic for those of us who are graph geeks:

By August 1, 2018, we will have consumed a whole year's worth of the planet's bounty. Starting August 2, we begin to drain the earth's savings account. We can only deplete our natural resources for so long before the reserves are gone.

On August 1, we'll have consumed more resources than the Earth can regenerate in a year — here's how you can reduce your ecological footprint

This is just an average and some countries do much better than others. I suspect that limiting meat, for one thing, will increase the amount of time it takes for a country to use up a year's worth of resources.

 

[andysays]

Happy Earth Overshoot Day. Here's a graphic for those of us who are graph geeks:

By August 1, 2018, we will have consumed a whole year's worth of the planet's bounty. Starting August 2, we begin to drain the earth's savings account. We can only deplete our natural resources for so long before the reserves are gone.

On August 1, we'll have consumed more resources than the Earth can regenerate in a year — here's how you can reduce your ecological footprint

This is just an average and some countries do much better than others. I suspect that limiting meat, for one thing, will increase the amount of time it takes for a country to use up a year's worth of resources.

It's also interesting that three of the top six countries there are Qatar, UAE and Kuwait. I doubt that their extremely high use of resources is entirely down to their consumption of meat and dairy products.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

It's also interesting that three of the top six countries there are Qatar, UAE and Kuwait. I doubt that their extremely high use of resources is entirely down to their consumption of meat and dairy products.

You're right. While they do consume large amounts of fast food, and their meat consumption is on par with the US, it doesn't account for the entire difference. I wonder if it isn't due to electricity consumption, transportation like air travel, and luxury goods.

Meat consumption by country:

Bangladesh: the world's most vegetarian country

The countries on the high-meat consumption list all fall around May or earlier on the graphic so there is some correlation.

 

[8ball]

So yeah, less meat eaten in poorer countries.

I’ve found some graphs mapping meat consumption against GNP per head. China and Brazil are well above the curve, Japan is well below it.

I’ll take a look for a more informative graphic than the ones I’ve found so far (posting on a phone).

 

[NoXion]

That's a great argument for the environmentalist cause. "Save the planet - live like those in the poorest countries in the world!". I'm sure it'll be a smash hit.

 

[8ball]

That's a great argument for the environmentalist cause. "Save the planet - live like those in the poorest countries in the world!". I'm sure it'll be a smash hit.

There also looks like a good correlation between being a poorer country with a rapidly growing average income, and being above the curve for meat consumption. Which isn't surprising. India seems to be bucking this, but I don't have longitudinal data.

edit: Some support for my initial impression:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J047v07n03_02?journalCode=wifa20

 

[NoXion]

This is why individualist solutions are crap: British rubbish sent overseas for recycling 'could end up in landfill instead'

Diligent efforts by households to recycle can be thus negated.

China is also fed up with our rubbish, so we need to do something else: Rubbish already building up at UK recycling plants due to China import ban

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

That's a great argument for the environmentalist cause. "Save the planet - live like those in the poorest countries in the world!". I'm sure it'll be a smash hit.

You can't deal with a problem until you truthfully define it. You also can't assume that "living poor" is the only answer to the problem. You can get more wiggle room on lifestyle if you move to renewable energy and more efficient transportation, for instance. And, as you point out, the structural solutions needed, to some of these problems are outside the control of the average person.

 

[andysays]

You're right. While they do consume large amounts of fast food, and their meat consumption is on par with the US, it doesn't account for the entire difference. I wonder if it isn't due to electricity consumption, transportation like air travel, and luxury goods.

Meat consumption by country:

Bangladesh: the world's most vegetarian country

The countries on the high-meat consumption list all fall around May or earlier on the graphic so there is some correlation.

Yeah, I'm certainly not suggesting there isn't any correlation, that would be ridiculous.

And it may very well be that the single simplest thing most of us in affluent western countries can do to reduce our environmental impact is to eat less meat, but that's in part because many of the other aspects of our lives which impact adversely on the environment are structural things over which we have little individual control.

 

[8ball]

I'm doing better in the evenings, but I do tend to fluff it a bit at breakfast and lunchtime.

Need to find some decent tasty breakfast and lunch options for work...

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

I'm doing better in the evenings, but I do tend to fluff it a bit at breakfast and lunchtime.

Need to find some decent tasty breakfast and lunch options for work...

Yep. Oatmeal gets old fast. These days, I eat things like miso soup and noodles with peanut sauce. Most of the world eats pretty much the same thing for breakfast as they do other meals.

 

[8ball]

Yep. Oatmeal gets old fast. These days, I eat things like miso soup and noodles with peanut sauce. Most of the world eats pretty much the same thing for breakfast as they do other meals.

Bit of breakfast umami is def what I need. Help avoid the bacon.

 

[NoXion]

You can't deal with a problem until you truthfully define it. You also can't assume that "living poor" is the only answer to the problem. You can get more wiggle room on lifestyle if you move to renewable energy and more efficient transportation, for instance.

I reject the notion that environmental problems can be truthfully defined by corporately-funded talking shops that somehow get on the news without having mass support or even actually achieving anything of note.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

I reject the notion that environmental problems can be truthfully defined by corporately-funded talking shops that somehow get on the news without having mass support or even actually achieving anything of note.

So what is your plan for the way forward? I'm all for what works. From their past track record, I wonder if relying on government to change things is really the answer here either.