ASK A VEGAN
Isgoingveganreallybetterfortheenvironment?
Yes. It cuts your food-related carbon, land and water use by about 50–75% each — the largest single action an individual can take.
ENVIRONMENT
Short answer
Yes. It cuts your food-related carbon, land and water use by about 50–75% each — the largest single action an individual can take.
ENVIRONMENT
The detail
Poore & Nemecek (Science 2018, 570 studies) found a vegan diet reduces individual food-carbon emissions by 73%, land use by 76%, and freshwater use by up to 50% compared to a meat-heavy diet.
Even the least-impactful beef causes 10–100× more emissions per gram of protein than plant sources. If everyone went vegan, global farmland use could shrink by 3.1 billion hectares (an area the size of the US, EU, China and Australia combined).
Source: Poore & Nemecek, Science 360, 987–992 (2018)
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