Table of contents
Part 1: Political Action
Part 2: Food
Part 3: Your home
Part 4: Work, Travel, and Everything Else
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Time is quickly running out for the human race — unless we make drastic changes in the way we live, our planet’s temperature will pass the point of no return, with devastating global consequences¹.
This article is part of a comprehensive guide on what you can do to help fight global warming. Millions of people can make a huge impact, but we must act right now.
This article focuses on the second most effective area for tackling the climate crisis — your food.
Stop throwing away food
Paul Hawken—author or global warming book Drawdown—believes that food waste is the single most important food-related action that you can take as an individual. Roughly a third of the world’s food gets lost or wasted every single year⁶.
Plan your meals
Take some time out to plan your meals for the days ahead. There’s some great meal planning apps that you can use to make things easier, such as Mealime. This will ensure that you only buy the necessary ingredients (with fewer impulse buys), and more importantly, the right amount of ingredients.
Though bulk buying is convenient, it’s been shown to lead to more food waste⁷, so try to shop more frequently when possible. Before leaving for the shops, quickly open your fridge and pantry to see what you have left.
Pick misshapen produce
When you’re shopping, pick the “ugly” misshapen produce instead. Though it tastes exactly the same, our penchant for perfection means that it’s much more likely to go to waste. You can also save money by purchasing discounted, “final sale” food.
Use everything that you buy
Try your hardest to use every single ingredient that you buy before it goes out of date. This awesome tool enables you to quickly get recipes based on what you already have in your home. Older foods should be consumed before newer ones—eyeball and sniff tests can usually tell you whether it’s still good to eat; the sell-by date is far from full-proof. You might also consider prioritising your food based on how quickly it’ll spoil, with hardier foods left for later in the week. If you find yourself with “old” food, research how to still make use of them.
Use as much of your food as possible. Broccoli stems can be shredded to make slaw. Meat bones can produce a delicious stock, as can vegetable scraps. A quick Google search of your ingredients can teach you how to use every part of the food that you buy.
Don’t chop away the skin of your produce—it contains tons of nutrients⁸.
Preserve your food
Instead of throwing away your leftovers, put them into a clear container as a visual reminder whenever you open the fridge, or consider using a different preservation method such as freezing, pickling, drying, or curing. You’ll be saving precious time and money.
Store your food correctly
Keep your fruits and vegetables fresh for longer by learning where they should be stored. For example, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, garlic and cucumbers should be not be refrigerated. Certain foods can also spoil others, by producing ethylene gas. These includes bananas, avocados, tomatoes, peaches, pears and green onions. By storing your food effectively, it’ll be fresher and more nutritious.
Blend a smoothie
Nutrient-packed smoothies are a great way to use up old ingredients, or parts of food that you might usually throw away. Chuck in something sweet like a banana or some strawberries, and you’ve got yourself a glass of deliciousness.
Use an app
There’s lots of apps that can help to prevent food waste. Flashfood lists local food re-sellers, and Food Rescue US enables you to easily donate excess food to hunger relief organisations. It feels wonderful to know that your leftovers are feeding somebody in a desperate situation.
Reflect, and donate
When you do throw something away, consider the reasons why. Did you buy too much of it? Every piece of disposed food is money from your pocket, and carbon in the atmosphere. Discarded food is best given to local food banks (find them here), or composted to make fertiliser for your plants.
Change the way you eat
Less meat and dairy, more fruits and vegetables
Changing the way that you eat is also an incredibly effective tactic for fighting global warming. It’s as simple as this: eat less meat and dairy, and more fruits and vegetables.
Food production is responsible for a quarter of all co2 emissions, with meat and other animal products making up half of that³. Cutting meat and dairy from your diet can reduce your carbon footprint by an astonishing two-thirds². Though a complete boycott is unreasonable, we can certainly cut back a lot, particularly with red meat. Places like the US, Europe, and Australia eat much more meat than is required for a healthy diet¹². Meat and dairy provide only 18% of our calories, but use 83% of Earth’s farmland⁴.
Eating a beef burger just twice a week for an entire year has the same environmental impact as driving a petrol car for roughly 1500 miles (2500km), or heating a UK home for three months². Those numbers are absolutely insane—if you want to help save the planet, avoid beef and lamb at all costs. You might consider trying some of the new meat alternatives that are appearing, such as Beyond Meat (it’s pretty damn close to the real thing).
You can discover the impact of different foods using this carbon footprint calculator.
Lost protein from meat is best made up with plants such as beans, legumes, nuts, and grains. If you must eat meat, go for chicken or pork.
More wild seafood
Seafood caught in the wild generally has a small climate footprint¹³, making it a climate-friendly source of protein. Much of the world is overfishing though, so it’s important to use an app such as Seafood Watch to check whether the food is sustainable.
Adopt an eco-friendly diet
The Western meat-heavy diet is making huge numbers of people fat and sick, causing roughly 11 million deaths a year⁵. By eating healthier, eco-friendly meals, you’ll lose weight, have more energy, reduce your risk of chronic disease, have better focus, and experience better moods⁹. Your diet is fundamental for your happiness.
One of the hardest things about changing your diet is knowing what to eat instead. Thankfully, there’s tons of websites that list eco-friendly recipes. Greener Ideal is a good option, or you can search for other sites in Google using this link. Vegan recipes are also a good bet, and can be tastier than you might expect.
If you’re eating out, go for the occasional veggie option.
Ban palm oil
The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) estimates that by 2022, 98% of Indonesia’s tropical forest will be destroyed for palm oil production and illegal logging. As tropical rainforest is removed, there’s fewer trees to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, and the newly-exposed peatland releases massive quantities of stored carbon¹¹. Palm oil is awful for our environment.
Tropical forests can provide a massive 24% of the climate change mitigation that we need to meet Paris Agreement goals¹¹. This won’t happen if we continue buying products that contain palm oil.
Take a few seconds to check the ingredients of your products. Palm oil is one of the most common types of vegetable oil, so if your product contains vegetable oil and has some saturated fat, it’s almost certainly palm oil. Common products that contain palm oil include bread, chips/crisps, ice cream, pizza bases, instant noodles, shampoo and chocolate. Try to purchase items that contain a different type of oil—olive oil is a healthy option.
Eat local, in-season food
Locally grown, in-season food doesn’t have to travel the world to arrive on your plate, making it an environmentally-friendly choice. It’ll be fresher, therefore tastier and more nutritious, and there’s less chance of pesticides and preservatives being used. Locally grown produce is undoubtedly healthier.
Farmer’s markets are a way to source local food, and the hard-working farmers in your community will get better margins from your purchase, instead of having to sell their produce at reduced prices to profit-hungry supermarkets. You can find your local farmer’s markets here.
Grow your own food
Home-grown food doesn’t need to be shipped thousands of miles to get to your plate, it’s right there for the picking. This makes it fresh, delicious, lacking in nasty pesticides, and incredibly nutritious. You’ll be saving money too.
You don’t necessarily need a garden to grow your own food, it can be as simple as a tomato or chilli plant on your apartment balcony, which also happen to brighten up the space. If you do have a little land (even the tiniest plot will do), you can consider growing potatoes or lettuces.
Check out this awesome guide to get started.
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Our food habits play a crucial role in tackling climate change, but only if we make a concerted effort. When millions of people change the way that they eat, our planet will become significantly less choked. Be the person who makes a difference, and help to save our planet.
References
- Matt McGrath, Final call to save the world from ‘climate catastrophe’
- Nassos Stylianou, Clara Guibourg and Helen Briggs, Climate change food calculator: What’s your diet’s carbon footprint?
- J Poore and T Nemecek, Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers
- Tim Lewis, Have we hit ‘peak beef’?
- Felicity Lawrence, The way we eat is killing us — and the planet
- Green Indy, 8 High Impact Ways to Fight Climate Change as an Individual
- Victoria K. Ligon, Shop More, Buy Less: A Qualitative Investigation Into Consumer Decisions That Lead To Food Waste In U.S. Households
- Healthline, 20 Easy Ways to Reduce Your Food Waste
- Unity Point, 10 Reasons Doctors Talk About The Need For Good Nutrition & Diets
- Wikipedia, Social and environmental impact of palm oil
- Christina Nunez, Deforestation Explained
- Prof Walter Willett, Prof Johan Rockström, Brent Loken, Marco Springmann, Prof Tim Lang, Sonja Vermeulen, et al. Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems
- Julia Moskin, Brad Plumer, Rebecca Lieberman and Eden Weingart, Your Questions About Food and Climate Change, Answered
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