Forget about recycling on Earth Day

With Earth Day approaching (its tomorrow), I'm posting an article I just read - which you can also view at Care2.com here....just a little something to think about!

This Earth Day, April 22, millions of people will take steps to save the planet. But while many people have embraced actions like recycling, taking short showers, and using cloth bags and energy-efficient light bulbs, relatively few have gone vegan. If you do just one thing to save the planet this Earth Day, please switch to a vegetarian diet.

Turning cows, pigs, chickens, and turkeys into "beef," "pork," and "poultry" is no simple matter. As E/The Environmental Magazine points out, "just about every aspect of meat production—from grazing-related loss of cropland, to the inefficiencies of feeding vast quantities of water and grain to cattle, to pollution from 'factory farms'—is an environmental disaster with wide and sometimes catastrophic consequences."

Consider this:

• Farmed animals generate more greenhouse gasses than SUVs, tractor trailers, trains, and jumbo jets put together. According to U.N. scientists, the livestock sector is one of the largest sources of carbon dioxide and the single largest source of both methane and nitrous oxide emissions. Nitrous oxide is about 300 times more potent as a global warming gas than carbon dioxide. The meat, egg, and dairy industries account for a staggering 65 percent of worldwide nitrous oxide emissions.

• Nearly half of the water used in the U.S. is squandered on animal agriculture. More than 4,000 gallons of water per day are required to produce a meat-based diet; only 300 gallons of water a day are needed to produce a totally vegetarian diet.

• The Environmental Protection Agency has reported that factory farms pollute our waterways more than all other industrial sources combined. A Scripps Howard synopsis of a Senate Agricultural Committee report on farm pollution issued this warning about animal waste: "[I]t's untreated and unsanitary, bubbling with chemicals and diseased. … It goes onto the soil and into the water that many people will, ultimately, bathe in and wash their clothes with and drink. It is poisoning rivers and killing fish and making people sick. … Catastrophic cases of pollution, sickness, and death are occurring in areas where livestock operations are concentrated. … Every place where the animal factories have located, neighbors have complained of falling sick."

• It takes 3 1/4 acres of land to produce food for a meat-eater, compared to only 1/6 of an acre of land to produce food for a vegan. A new study, produced jointly by environmental groups and the soy industry, showed that cattle ranchers are largely responsible for the destruction of the Amazon rainforest. The U.N.'s report Livestock's Long Shadow says that the "[e]xpansion of livestock production is a key factor in deforestation, especially in Latin America, where the greatest amount of deforestation is occurring—70 percent of previous forested land in the Amazon is occupied by pastures, and feedcrops cover a large part of the remainder."

If you're not willing to go vegetarian, at least consider eating less meat. Once you see how easy it is, you'll realize that it's just as easy to go vegetarian. While it won't fix all the problems in the world, a collective move toward veganism will reduce disease risks, drastically lessen animal suffering, and substantially "green" the planet. For tips on making the transition to a vegetarian diet, see www.GoVeg.com. Have a happy, meat-free Earth Day, everyone!