Another piece on the what and how you eat discussion Jeanne
New Finding: What You Eat Matters More Than Where It's Grown. By Erika Engelhaupt, Environmental Science & Technology, April 17, 2008. "It's how food is produced, not how far it is transported, that matters most for global warming, according to new research... In fact, eating less red meat and dairy can be a more effective way to lower an average U.S. household's food-related climate footprint than buying local food, says lead author Christopher Weber [and Scott Matthews] of Carnegie Mellon... [who] found that transportation creates only 11% of the 8.1 metric tons of greenhouse gases (in CO2 equivalents) that an average U.S. household generates annually as a result of food consumption [while] the agricultural and industrial practices that go into growing and harvesting food are responsible for most (83%) of its greenhouse gas emissions... Edgar Hertwich, an expert on life-cycle analysis who is at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, calls the results 'quite convincing' but notes that consumers should still keep an eye on food flown on airplanes, which have very high greenhouse gas emissions... 'It's still useful to think about transport,' says David Pimentel of Cornell, an ecologist who has conducted life-cycle analyses of food's energy use." ASAP Environ. Sci. Technol., ASAP Article, 10.1021/es702969f Web Release Date: April 16, 2008 Copyright © 2008 American Chemical Society Food-Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/esthag/asap/abs/es702969f.html Christopher L. Weber* and H. Scott Matthews Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213 Received for review November 28, 2007 Revised manuscript received March 4, 2008 Accepted March 14, 2008 Abstract: Despite significant recent public concern and media attention to the environmental impacts of food, few studies in the United States have systematically compared the life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with food production against long-distance distribution, aka “food-miles.” We find that although food is transported long distances in general (1640 km delivery and 6760 km life-cycle supply chain on average) the GHG emissions associated with food are dominated by the production phase, contributing 83% of the average U.S. household’s 8.1 t CO2e/yr footprint for food consumption. Transportation as a whole represents only 11% of life-cycle GHG emissions, and final delivery from producer to retail contributes only 4%. Different food groups exhibit a large range in GHG-intensity; on average, red meat is around 150% more GHG-intensive than chicken or fish. Thus, we suggest that dietary shift can be a more effective means of lowering an average household’s food-related climate footprint than “buying local.” Shifting less than one day per week’s worth of calories from red meat and dairy products to chicken, fish, eggs, or a vegetable-based diet achieves more Download the full text: PDF | HTML _______________________________________________ For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
