Eating is one of our most intimate forms of relationship with the earth. By farming, we give and receive from the soil, and our food is a constant reminder of our reliance on that soil. After all, we’d be dead without it. Along with that intimacy, though, comes the potential for abuse, so it’s important to decide how we eat with the health of the earth in mind, caring for it in the same way that it cares for us.
In some circles, sustainable eating is presented in a somewhat extreme manner, expressing that anyone who doesn’t eat in “this” or “that” way is not a true environmentalist, but in this blog post, I wanted to address sustainable eating with a broader focus, offering a list of simple practices that anyone could draw inspiration from.
I have no illusions that anyone can single-handedly save the environment by eating differently, but anyone can help, and the individual choice to eat differently is a great way to have a positive impact on the earth.
So, whether you’re an environmental zealot or someone who just wants to help how they can, here’s a list of five ways to eat more sustainably!
1: Reduce Packaging
This is a simple tip that anyone (including myself) could apply somewhere in their lives. The best thing is to get food with no packaging at all, which is often an option at local farms and markets, but since most of us do have to buy things with packaging, a good overall goal is to buy food with less packaging or with recyclable packaging.
As some examples of this, plastic-wrapped ramen can be replaced with boxed pasta, artificial “fruit snacks” with loose apples, and bagged snacks (like nuts or dates) with snacks in recyclable containers. Some breads have two layers of packaging, others don’t. If you’re adventurous, you could even try making your own bread. Another way that I like to reduce the packaging I throw out is by reusing tea bags, most of which can be safely used two or three times.
All that to say, there are lots of ways to reduce our packaging waste!
2: Eat Local
When you’re trying to lower your carbon footprint, it seems that “what you eat matters a lot more than where it comes from,” but eating local food can still be helpful (Moskin). The food in the grocery store will often come by truck, ship, or plane, which contributes to carbon emissions. But when food comes from your own yard, or from local farms or vendors, it doesn’t travel as far to reach your plate. This helps keep a little more carbon out of the atmosphere.
There are several fun options for finding food sourced from your area. When I’ve volunteered at gardens, the coordinators have often let me take local produce home with me, and many farms, selling to the general public, will offer food shares, which can include things like vegetables, bread, cheese, and perhaps an extra ware from a local vendor, like honey or salsa.
3: Store Leftovers
A lot of water, energy, and greenhouse gas emissions go into making and transporting our food, but unfortunately, we often end up throwing a lot of that food away. “By some estimates,” according to the New York Times, “Americans end up throwing out roughly 20 percent of the food they buy” (Moskin). When we throw out our food, it wastes natural resources and money.
In light of that, a simple way to care for the environment (and our wallets) is to save what we don’t eat for another day. You can buy containers for this, or in some cases, you can wash out and reuse containers you get from the store. My family often does that with lunch meat containers.
4: Compost
Landfills have a carbon footprint. The machinery involved with excavating a dump, transporting waste to it, and compressing it produces emissions. Beyond that, discarded food waste will also “release methane, a potent greenhouse gas” (EPA). So, when we compost, we save energy and lower greenhouse gas emissions.
Composting may seem like one of the more intimidating items on this list, but it’s one of my favorites, and it’s surprisingly easy to do. (NPR gives five simple steps.) Some years ago, after adding a small collection bin in our kitchen, my family set apart a small square of earth in our backyard, where we began layering our kitchen scraps with leaves and dirt. The pile’s maintenance only requires a shovel and a rake. At first, the soil around our pile was dry, hard, and dead, but as we’ve continued composting there, I’ve seen it transform into a rich black, alive with worms, millipedes, and little green shoots. By composting, I’ve been able to see that little patch of soil come back to life.
For good resources on how to make a compost pile, what things you should or shouldn’t add, and some of the practice’s benefits, feel free to look at these articles from the EPA and The Spruce.
5: Reduce Meat and Dairy
Our food industry in general, for most or all food types, is not sustainable, but meat and dairy create an especially large output of greenhouse gases, accounting for about 14.5% of our annual greenhouse gas emissions across the globe, “roughly the same amount as the emissions from all the cars, trucks, airplanes and ships combined in the world today” (Moskin). Plants, by contrast, usually have the “smallest impact” on climate change (Moskin).
From the opinions I’ve heard and read, some question how effective eating less meat and dairy is for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but almost everyone seems to agree that it does help. One of the more optimistic estimates, coming from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2018, claims that eating fewer livestock products “could contribute one-fifth of the mitigation needed to hold warming below 2°C” (de Coninck).
To be clear, this doesn’t mean that shifting our diets away from meat and dairy is the only or the most important way to protect the environment. For those of you with dietary or financial limitations, those are legitimate reasons to keep eating meat and dairy. There are lots of other ways to help.
Beyond that, this dietary shift doesn’t necessarily mean “going vegan.” You could simply find ways of reducing your intake, such as having two meatless days a week. Even eating different kinds of animal products can help. Animal products like “pork, chicken, eggs, and mollusks,” as well as certain kinds of fish, produce fewer greenhouse gases than “beef, lamb and cheese” (Moskin).
A Note on Nutrition
As a vegan, I can affirm that there are plenty of ways to have a healthy diet without meat and dairy, but if you do cut one of those things from your diet, be sure to do some research first on what nutrients you may need to supplement—like iron, calcium, protein, Vitamin D, and Vitamin B12. For aspiring vegans, here are some articles from Vegan Health and the International Vegan Association, and for vegetarians, here are some articles from the Mayo Clinic and Eatright.org. Those are some good starting points.
Also, for a thorough discussion of climate and food, as well as recipe recommendations, feel free to look over this thorough and informative article from the New York Times, which I’ve cited several times throughout this post.
Last Thoughts
As you consider these different tips for sustainable eating, it’s important to remember that the personal actions that I’ve listed should (ideally) be combined with broader, systemic changes in our food system. If we don’t actively hold our food industries accountable to caring for the environment, then many (if not the majority) of our destructive cycles of production and distribution will continue. (Writing that out, I feel convicted, because I’ve rarely held food industries accountable myself. Perhaps action points for systemic food reform could be a topic for a later post.)
In light of these systemic issues, though, why should we care about our personal eating choices at all? Can one person making one change to their life really solve these problems?”
To some extent, I think that’s the wrong question. If we decide to forgive someone, to listen to someone in their grief, or to reach out to an outsider, we’re not asking ourselves, “Is this one act really going to solve the global issues of hate, grief, or loneliness?” No. We ask ourselves, “Is this the right thing to do?” And if it is right, then we ask if it’s in our power to help. That’s my goal in writing this post: to show some simple ways that anyone can help.
No one can single-handedly save the earth, but if we have the means, whether great or small, to help the environment, then I believe it’s worth doing. Whether it’s through some of the practices I mentioned above, or through something entirely different, our role is simply to care for nature with whatever means are available to us. If we take up that mission together—not only as individuals, but as communities, corporations, and countries—we’ll have a lighter burden, and we’ll attain a greater thriving for both nature and ourselves.
Works Cited
de Coninck, H., et al. “Strengthening and implementing the global response.” Special Report:
Global Warming of 1.5 °C, 2018. IPCC, https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-4/.
Accessed 4 Aug. 2020.
EPA. “Composting At Home.” EPA, https://www.epa.gov/recycle/composting-home.
Accessed 4 Aug. 2020.
Moskin, Julia, et al. “Your Questions About Food and Climate Change, Answered.” The New
York Times, 8 May 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/30/dining/climate
-change-food-eating-habits.html#:~:text=Meat%20and%20dairy%2C%20particularly%20f
rom,combined%20in%20the%20world%20today. Accessed 4 Aug. 2020.
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