Aubrey Carr/ Staff Writer
The idea of going green usually brings to mind alternate transportation and remembering to turn off the lights when leaving a room, but dieting habits can also affect the planet.
Producing and consuming meat — especially red meat — and animal byproducts is certainly a contributor to climate change.
“Animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, more than the combined exhaust from all transportation,” according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
This is not only because of the methane gas emitted by animals — although methane gas is even more destructive than carbon dioxide — but also because of the effort that goes into creating land that is suitable for mass animal agriculture.
This entails clearing out thousands of acres of land to house and plant crops to feed the livestock — crops that use massive amounts of water.
Cara Marie Connolly, a junior at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow majoring in political science, has been vegan for over three years.
“For Lent, when I was 15 I gave up meat and never went back to it. However, by the time I was 17 I felt being vegetarian wasn’t enough,” Connolly said.
After unearthing information on the treatment of animals by the dairy industry, effects of animal agriculture on the environment, and the health benefits of being a vegan, Connolly decided to leave behind a diet that relied on any animal products.
“It was fairly easy for me as there are so many amazing alternatives for meat, cheese and even fish,” she said.
In the past year, Connolly said that she’s “noticed a massive change” in the amount of vegan-friendly products that can be found in the UK, which makes sense, considering that the amount of vegans in Britain has risen exponentially in the last decade.
Although vegans and vegetarians compose only a small portion of the 64 million population, according to the Vegan Society, over half a million people in the UK adhere to a vegan diet. So when Connolly moved from Glasgow, which she said had been previously voted the most vegan-friendly city in the UK, to Aix-en-Provence in the South of France, she faced a major challenge.
A typical southern French diet focuses heavily on fish and dairy products, but Connolly has managed, finding creative solutions to otherwise inedible recipes and has become a regular at a local falafel restaurant.
And even though there are multiple ways someone can be environmentally conscious, Connolly believes veganism is the best way to do her part in saving the planet.
“I try to recycle as much as possible, use public transport or car sharing, etc., [but] I think the best thing you can do to be environmentally friendly is be vegan,” she said.
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Photo taken from Flickr.
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