How does being a vegetarian help the environment?!
Answers: its for a school project...
It takes an average of 2,500 gallons of water to produce a single pound of meat. According to Newsweek, "The water that goes into a 1,000 pound steer could float a destroyer." In contrast, it takes only 25 gallons of water to produce one pound of wheat.
^ So basically half of the water used in the U.S. is used for animal agriculture.
Feeding a person who eats no food derived from animals requires only 1/6 acre per year
Since so much fossil fuel is needed to produce it, beef could be considered a petroleum product. With factory housing, irrigation, trucking, and refrigeration, as well as petrochemical fertilizer production requiring vast amounts of energy, approximately one gallon of gasoline goes into every pound of grain-fed beef.
It takes twenty pounds of soybeans to feed to a cow to make one pound of meat. Those same amounts of soybeans could help fed all the starving people of the world.
Overall if more people were vegetarians, people wouldn't raise cattle and pigs that create more waste products, such as carbon dioxide and methane gas! Good luck on your project.
Save animals!
The environment is being decimated by the animal agri-businesses. It's the second largest contributer to global warming according to the United Nations. Did you know that 20 vegetarians could live off the land that only one omnivore could?
check this out:
http://www.veganoutreach.org/whyvegan/en...
The more people become aware of how animals are treated- what they are fed, and the land that is destroyed to raise them.... the better for our planet. The truth is that both animals and the land is being abused for our consumption- greed and over eating. The book "skinny *****" has good info. regarding such treatments.
While one individuals' actions is unlikely to make a big difference, the higher up in the food chain your food is, the more resources went into it, and it goes exponentially.
Cows have to eat, and by the time you've fed a cow to the point it can be eaten itself, you could've fed vastly more people than the cow will. Furthermore, the cow burps methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.
The major cause of deforestation in the tropics is ranching. There are some exceptions, such as synthetic leather needing to be replaced more frequently than real, and possibly even having a greater impact itself, but generally plant-based is more ecological than animal-based (with wide variances even within the categories, e.g., bamboo-wood vs. hardwood)
It is called sustainability. you can look up on google...basically by not eating meat you are not supporting some of the malpractices of raising animals which ends up hurting the environment. sustainability is the ability of an ecosystem to maintain ecological processes and functions, biological diversity, and productivity over time. even meat eaters can support this, however, by buying locally and knowing where the meat they're consuming comes from.
It really doesn't..less cows..means less methane gas..Eat A Burger..help save the planet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_far...
1. farms are polluting our air...the greenhouse gases (400 different gases) that come out of these factory farms tops automobiles in the US.
2. Polluting our water: And estimates that more than 335 million tons of manure are produced annually on farms in the United States, which is polluting out water. Some say that the bird flu is caused by corporate farming (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/...
3. They are cutting down the rainforest to grow corn and soy, which feed the cows that get slaughtered and shipped to fast food chains.
3. the majority of grain that we grow goes to cows....it takes about 11-13 pounds of grain to get one pound of beef, If Americans would reduce meat consumption by just 10%, enough grain would be saved to feed the 60,000,000 people who die of hunger each year.
4. I work in environmental law and have found out some really crazy things,,,,,like they give this hormone to pigs that is so toxic to humans, that it is law that they stop administering this hormone at least 3 months before human consumption, but who knows if they are doing this? And that is just one piece of info that I know, and really, I know very little.
And well to me, giving my money to these people who don't care if the meat is healthy, they don't care of you or your family, or our communities or our environment. They want your money. I can't support them anymore.
If the US alone would cut their meat consumption by 15-20 percent, they would save 60,000,000 pounds of grain...we could put a huge dent into world starvation with that....I challenge people all the time to go veg 2-3 times a week and they do and love it.
Sorry this is not all about the environment, but some very interesting data I have found in my research.
good luck
Check this out.
cows produce tons of manure, which give off CO2, therefore contributing to global warming. also, the runoff of animal waste into the ground and nearby rivers contaminates our food and water. also, it takes 12 pounds of grains to produce 1 pound of beef. therefore, it takes up tons and tons of food to produce meat. livestock also take up and destroys all the space that could be used for growing plants.
it is better to be a vegetarian who drives a Hummer than a meat-eater that drives a Prius.
helps make less pollution.
i get asked this alot. and the truth is it really doesn't. even though myself and other vegetarians don't eat the meat, the animals are still dying. i just choose not to support it and be a part of it
It doesn't. Peta puts out that kind of propaganda to recruit more tree huggers.