Sustainability in Amsterdam

Did you know that by eating vegan 1 day/week, you save 4.164L of water?!

Written by Nadine Wilmerstadt from http://www.ourveganrevolution.com/

Did you know that by eating vegan 1 day/week, you save 4.164L of water!

The production of meat requires a large amount of water. Not only because the animals need water to drink every day, they are also fed with plants which have been watered to grow. If we would eat the plants straight away instead of feeding them to animals, we would use up less water than by producing meat. It takes 100-200 times more water to produce a pound of beef than it does to grow a pound of plant foods.

Besides using up a lot of fresh water (More than 70% of the earth’s fresh water is used in agriculture of plants and animals), meat production also causes water pollution. Sewage from cattle and other livestock can contaminate groundwater and rivers. The UN has reported that the livestock sector is likely to be the largest source of water pollution globally. Manure and slurry contain high levels of nitrogen and phosphor.  These elements can leak into groundwater and run off to pollute lakes, killing the fish and endangering the health of other animals. Ammonia is also given off and can cause acid rain.)

Save 18kg of grain, which would have been fed to animals.

Impoverished populations are forced to grow cash crops for animal feed, rather than food for themselves, which increases malnutrition across the globe. Livestock consume much more protein, water and calories than they produce. To feed those animals, some humans go hungry. Many more people could be fed if the agricultural land would be used for the production of food for humans instead of animals. 

Save 2,8m2 of forest

More and more land is necessary for the production of crops to feed animals, which leads to deforestation. Between 60% and 90% of deforestation is due to animal agriculture, and over the past 25 years, the amount of forest that has been cleared equals the size of India.

Cause up to 73% less emissions than yesterday

Animal agriculture is the single largest source of methane emissions globally and produces about 4 times as much global greenhouse gas emissions as all of transportation combined (road, rail, air, marine). A vegan diet cuts your carbon footprint in half, compared to meat eaters.

Save 1 animal’s life

Not only are animals being slaughtered for the direct production of meat, lots of animals are also killed as a by-product, for instance marine species, which are being caught in fishing nets unintendedly, and then discarded.