I have become very much obsessed with the environment and always have been to some extent, a few years ago my parents found it incredibly amusing that instead of clothes and money I was demanded a compost bin, not very vogue but there's nothing fashionable about waste and landfills. An article in 'The Sunday Business Post' regarding meat consumption really caught my eye. I am not the vegetarian type I practically inhale red meat but reading this article made me want to make a few changes. According to the article and the UN, meat production accounts for more greenhouses gases being pumped into the atmosphere than the transport that we all thought was so sinful. Meat production accounts for 18% of theses gases, while cars, buses and aeroplanes produce 13%. The article was cramped with other worrying facts such as 'Livestock rearing can use up to 200 times more water per kilogram of meat than in a kilo of grain'. With the impending threat of water shortages in our future surely reducing my meat consumption is just as urgent as switching off lights and turning appliances of standby, something we are constantly advised to do to be more Eco friendly and yet when meat is such a large contributor to our problem why haven't we been hearing as much about it?
The clearance of rainforest's to aid our appetite for meat was what gave me the biggest wake up call; Apparently 70% of forests in the amazon have been cleared for livestock grazing and a further 500 million hectares will be converted in the same way up to 2020 in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.
I will probably never be a vegetarian no matter how much my conscience would plead with me to be but I am adamant to make a change, a Meat Free Monday campaign has been launched in Britain and I intend to follow suit. If you've got the will power to completely cut out meat you are contributing greatly to change, while vegetarianism is not for everyone, cutting out meat just one day a week can be.
For more information see www.supportmfm.org, supporters of the campaign include Paul McCartney, Sir Richard Branson, Kate Bosworth, Ricky Gervais and Stella McCartney.
P.s. Images sourced from google images
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