plant based |

Fair trade is awesome. No, not the kind Trump talks about where trade deficits are bad and trade wars are awesome. What I and other hipsters who use the term fair trade mean is a product produced in a way deemed ethical and…well, fair. There are various fair trade certificates and organizations all differing slightly on what their standard of “fair” is. This is why using those stamps of approval are useful but it’s also worth thinking about your own ethical standard. What I define as fair might be a little different than you but for the most part fair trade for everyone refers to fair wages for those involved in the making of said product, fair working conditions, sustainable practices (does the product create a lot of waste and/or have an unjustified effect on the environment) and were animals abused in the making of the product. Seems pretty simple but there are many companies that don’t meet this standard, only meet it halfway, or don’t have the same definition of fair that I do. Below is how I personally, define each of these standards.

The makers of the product are paid a fair wage.
The makers of the product are paid according to the value they add to the company. This will vary country to country and it doesn’t necessarily mean they must be paid more than minimum wage. I don’t think minimum wage for a fast food cook is unfair but I do think minimum wage for a fast food manager is unfair. Perhaps you disagree with this standard but that’s the cool thing about a free market, you can buy according to your values and I to mine. Any product that’s made in America meets this standard for me. I believe America is a free enough place that employees are generally paid what they are worth and have the option to find better work if they believe they are treated unfairly. There are resources to learn more about fair wages around the world and you can find them here.

The makers of the product work in decent conditions.
What I mean by this is that no one is forced to work extreme hours at threat of losing their job if they refuse. Workers are also in air conditioned facilities or heated facilities if necessary. And this should go without saying but workers are not physically punished for messing up something on the job.
I also avoid products with chemicals in them in order to meet this standard. Even in the U.S. employees work with chemicals without even realizing the damage they are causing to themselves until years later. I also avoid meat products, especially from factory farms because of the negative effects breathing in all the fumes and dealing with animal waste can have. Check out this link for more info on the negative effects of factory farms on employees. Any product involving chemicals often have adverse effects on workers. Perhaps the best example of this is pesticides and farm workers. You can read more on that here. Chemical free and BPA free are things I look out for when buying stuff.

Sustainable practices.
This one was a huge reason why I gave up meat. As more and more people around the world adopt the American diet or westernized diet rather, we will need more and more land to raise the animals. There simply isn’t enough land on Earth to feed 7 billion people a animal centered diet. There also isn’t a good way to get rid of all the waste these animals create. You can read more about the sustainability of an animal based diet here.
When it comes to non-food products I am really not too picky. They don’t have to be green certified but I don’t want them dumping waste in rivers. In fact, a lot of companies will forgo the vegan/green/fair trade stamps because those usually cost money to apply for and they don’t want to transfer the cost to their customers which I totally get and appreciate. So don’t disregard a product simply because it doesn’t have the stamp you are accustomed to seeing.
It’s also a plus when the materials used to make the product are biodegradable, reusable etc. I try to avoid plastic when I can

Cruelty free.
Companies will always brag about this so it’s usually not hard to figure out. I am not against using rats in lab tests per say but animal testing can get out of control pretty quick. PETA gets a lot of shit, most of which they deserve, but when it comes to animal testing they make a strong case.
*With all these guidelines you have to be careful. Often companies will claim to be fair trade or green or cruelty free etc. because those who put the product together meet all these guidelines. Sometimes the people sewing the shoes together are treated well but the people who cultivate the shoe materials aren’t. Just something to keep in mind.

I started focusing on more ethical shopping funny enough, because of my capitalistic values. The trade part of fair trade actually drew me in just as much as the fair part. I realized I alone was responsible for the consequences of my actions and that through a free market system I could tell companies what was and wasn’t acceptable with every dollar I spent. Your value system might not be the same as mine, but I still encourage you to shop along your moral compass. People often tell me they feel helpless when they shouldn’t. The organic product market is expected to grow 14% from 2017 to 2021, from 2004 to 2016 Fairtrade International product revenue grew roughly 835%, sales of plant based food went up 8.1% last year and continues to grow, the natural (chemical free) beauty industry is seeing sales increase every year with growth at 7% outpacing overall industry growth and Jessica Alba famously became a billionaire almost overnight after starting The Honest Company.
This growth isn’t because companies just felt like it, it’s because their customers demanded it. A lot of my fellow naturalists claim to hate capitalism, but it’s the fuel creating massive change across all industries. You say something every time you buy something and businesses are listening. Compassionate capitalism isn’t a real economic term, but if it were, I suppose it would look like shopping fair trade.

I have long been interested in becoming a vegetarian or at least trying it out. Originally, I was interested mostly for the health benefits.

When I went vegetarian, it didn’t last long (literally a week) because the more research I did, the more I realized vegan was the way to go. At first I switched to veganism with the exception of family farm animal products but that only lasted another two weeks because more research showed me that I should go full on vegan. (Free range farming is actually less sustainable than factory farming, a fact that should’ve seemed obvious but alas it wasn’t.)

Now that I’ve practiced this diet for over a year, health is probably the least important reason for me to stick to it. Now the biggest reason I am vegan is for sustainability. I follow quite a few pro-plant based diet environmentalists and there is a big question being argued amongst environmental and vegan threads. Can one be an environmentalist and eat animal products? Can you eat animal products and at the same time claim to care about the earth?

This question got a lot of attention after the documentary funded by Leonardo DiCaprio came out called Cowspiracy where the consensus was no, you can’t claim to care about the environment and eat meat. Of course a lot of meat eaters who consider themselves environmentalists were offended.

One can be an environmentalist in many forms. Maybe you are focused on ending global warming or maybe you want more biodegradable packaging, maybe manatees getting beat up by boats is your cause. We can argue about global warming, or what animal abuse looks like or what amount of litter is unavoidable ‘til our faces turn blue which is why I tend to lean towards sustainability as my brand of environmentalism.

There are roughly 7 billion people on Earth. On average, each person eats 74.6 pounds of meat per year (in the U.S. it’s 270.7). So that’s 523,000,000,000 pounds of meat per year. This figure includes beef, poultry, lamb and pork, not seafood. This number is expected to rise as more countries adopt westernized diets although as more Americans have jumped on the vegetarian/vegan train, the last 10 years have seen a decline in the amount of meat consumed per year though we still eat more meat than we did in the 1970s.

Ok so 523 billion pounds of meat. How do we create 523 billion pounds of meat? Well, first we have to raise the animals. Let’s break down America’s favorite (beef) first.

Roughly 19% (99.4 billion pounds) of the world’s meat consumption comes from beef. The average yield of retail cuts from beef is roughly 434 pounds per cow. 99.4 billion divided by 434 is roughly 229 million cows. So about 229 million cows are needed per year to feed the world. That’s a lot of cows….and that’s not including dairy cows, or cows that aren’t slaughtered nor produce milk. This is just how many cows are eaten each year.

So what does it take to raise the cows (we eat)? To produce one pound of meat it takes 1799 gallons of water, so roughly 1.5 trillion gallons of water for all of the cows we eat yearly. It takes 6.6 pounds of grain per pound of meat so roughly 656 billion pounds of grain. AND it takes 15 pounds of CO2 per pound of meat so roughly 1.5 trillion pounds of CO2.

So you think ok, I’ll eat poultry or pork or lamb instead. They’re smaller so they should be more sustainable. Let me break those options down for you too.

	Lbs Needed to Feed World	Animals Needed	Gallons H2O Needed	Lbs of Grain Needed	CO2 Emissions
Beef	99.4 billion	229 million	178.8 trillion	656 billion	1.5 trillion
Pork	193.5 billion	1.9 billion	111.5 trillion	812.7 billion	1.3 trillion
Lamb	26.2 billion	748.6 million	19.1 trillion	81.2 billion	419.2 billion
Poultry	204 billion	29.1 billion	95.5 trillion	856.8 billion	687.5 billion

That’s a lot of finite resources being used.

But there are a couple of other issues I haven’t even talked about. Deforestation and manure.

Beef production accounts for the destruction of 6.7 million acres of tropical forest each year. That’s an area roughly the size of Massachusetts, each year. About half the world’s tropical forests have already been cleared. Because much of this destruction is happening in foreign lands, many of us are not even aware of the rapidly disappearing forests.

Just the cows the world eats produce about 4.9 trillion pounds of manure each year. That’s roughly 60 pounds of manure per cow per day. Or 13.5 billion pounds of manure a day. About 8% of that is recoverable. And that’s just cow shit. Poultry – 6.3 trillion pounds of waste a year. Lamb – 1.2 trillion pounds of waste a year. Pigs are the “shittiest” accounting for 10.9 trillion pounds of waste a year. Combine the four animals the world eats the most and that’s 23.3 trillion pounds of waste a year.

So where does it all go?

You may be thinking “well the animal poops out in the field and the manure acts as fertilizer.” This sometimes applies to cows or sheep/goats who are grazed on open fields. That’s a small percentage of the animal population. Factory farms certainly don’t have this luxury.

Generally speaking, most animals drop their waste in a house or barn where they are kept. The waste then must be transported out of the building (using thousands of gallons of water) and is stored in a giant outdoor pit known as a lagoon. As the waste decomposes it emits gases such as ammonia and hydrogen sulfide. These lagoons also tend to leak or rupture destroying local ecosystems. In June, a ruptured hose lead to hundreds of gallons of hog manure being leaked into local creeks and ditches in Iowa. There are countless cases just like this, some worse than others.

Water usage and CO2 emissions aren’t unavoidable no matter what your diet is. In fact, some plants such as lettuce (why anyone wants to eat green crunchy water is beyond me) have a high emissions rate and regular potatoes are the 10th highest food when it comes to environmental impact. (Funny enough, the healthier sweet potato has one of the lowest environmental impacts.) But guess what, the first nine foods with the highest environmental impact? All animal products.

At a basic level we all can see how animal products (whether meat, eggs, dairy etc.) require more resources to produce. A carnivorous diet is a two tier process. Grow the plants to feed the animal, raise the animal until it’s slaughtered. A plant based diet has one tier, grow the plants.

So back to the original question. Can you be an environmentalist and still eat animal products? Of course you can. The same as you can be a dog lover who doesn’t own any dogs or a great athlete who’s not very athletic (lookin’ at you Yao Ming). I get it, bacon is really hard to give up and we’re all human.

That being said, powerful leaders practice what they preach. It would be harder to take health advice from an overweight doctor who smokes right? Same thing with animal product consuming environmentalists. But guess what? You don’t have to go all in and you don’t have to do it right away. Pescatarian, vegetarian, lacto-vegetarian, ovo-vegetarian and vegan diets are all options. You could also become a vegan except for your weakness food. So, you’re a vegan except when it comes to cheese. Or you don’t eat any meat except for the steak your dad is famous for. Looking at the chart above, you can see that cows and pigs have a higher impact per animal unit (1000 pounds) than poultry so even eliminating red meat from your diet is helpful.

Here’s the thing. A traditional American diet, especially one that is increasingly becoming the norm around the world is not sustainable. Math shows us this. We have a finite amount of land and water to use for agriculture. If we keep our diets as is, eventually we will have no choice but to switch to plant based diets. I’d like to keep meat as an option. A special treat, for a special occasion. With current diet and population trends, one day meat will be something only the wealthiest in the world can afford.

Additional sources:
thefatewe.com
www.oda.state.ok.us
Stonebarnscenter.org
oecd-ilibrary.org

Tag: plant based

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