The human factor | Become vegan? No thanks !

Are you having guests over for a barbecue this weekend? What will you put on the grill? Animal proteins, it’s a safe bet. Even though we know the effects of meat consumption on health and the environment, for many, it is inconceivable to deprive ourselves of it.

How to reduce the ecological footprint of your plate without becoming vegan? This is the question that Simon Lavoie asked us.

In Quebec, our food represents approximately 20% of our annual individual carbon footprint. According to a study carried out by the International Reference Center on Life Cycle Analysis and Sustainable Transition (CIRAIG) in 2020, half of this burden is attributable to meat, fish and dairy products. From the strict point of view of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions – and animal ethics – excluding any product of animal origin from your plate therefore has a considerable effect.

But in reality, how many people are ready to take the plunge? According to data from Statista, in 2022, only 3% of Canadians declared themselves vegan and 4% vegetarian.

“The simplified speech is to say: if everyone becomes vegan, things will get better, but that is not necessarily what everyone wants to hear and there are other ways to act to reduce significantly the environmental footprint of its food”, illustrates Catherine Houssard, food engineering engineer and analyst at CIRAIG.

Few people know that less radical changes can have a considerable effect, she believes.

“Becoming vegan means no longer consuming animal products. This is draconian, because animal products include meat, fish, shellfish, dairy products and eggs. »

Due to the amount of land required to feed cattle, the use of chemical fertilizers, methane emissions and manure management, beef has a carbon footprint roughly 10 times higher than chicken.

Researchers at McGill University recently studied the consequences of partially replacing red and processed meats and dairy products with plant proteins. Their findings, published in the journal Nature Food at the start of the year, shows that the carbon footprint of our diet drops by 25% when we replace half of our consumption of red and processed meats with plant proteins. For dairy products, the reduction is 5%.

Consult the study (in English)

“This is not enough to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, but all sectors of the food supply chain must have a role in reducing greenhouse gases linked to the production and processing of food,” says Olivia Auclair, a graduate in nutrition, doctor of animal sciences and principal investigator of the study.

This also highlights the low impact on the nutrition of individuals, in addition to a drop in calcium intake when dairy products are partially substituted. We can even gain between seven and nine months of life expectancy! Significant co-benefits, according to Olivia Auclair, for changing your diet.

Tackling waste

Another effective, but less publicized, measure is that of food waste. For Caroline Houssard, it is even the first gesture to make. “Ideally, we should ban waste, but it is extremely difficult. We all have crazy lives and we waste food, not out of bad will, but because we don’t have the time to plan properly. »

Given that the production, distribution and processing of our food accounts for 82% of its carbon footprint, throwing away food, especially meat, has far-reaching consequences. “We associate waste with emissions of organic waste in landfills, but the impact is in the production of food, from its cultivation in the field to its transport, its transformation in factories, its distribution, its refrigeration, explains M^me Hussard. It impacts the entire life cycle of the food so that it ultimately ends up in the trash. »

If reducing red meat and reducing food waste constitute the two main pillars for reducing the footprint on our plates, many questions remain in the grocery aisles. Local or organic? Mexican strawberries or local greenhouse strawberries? “Not everything is intuitive. We need to develop systems to educate people,” says the woman who is in favor of environmental labeling on food.

The number of the week

$0.12

This is the amount that each dollar spent by cyclists saves society, according to a research project by HEC Montréal graduates Gabrielle Beaudin and Muriel Julien and Professor David Benatia. Each dollar spent by pedestrians saves $0.01 while the automobile represents a social cost of $1.55 per dollar spent, and public transit, $0.49. The trio also designed a calculator to estimate the real cost of different modes of transport.

Visit the project page

They said

“In the case of climate, we are not the dinosaurs. We are the meteor. We are not just in danger – we are the danger. But we are also the solution. »

António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, during a speech in New York on Wednesday, in which he called on countries to ban advertisements from the fossil fuel industry.

Green light

After the Trottibus, the velobus

In the United States, more than half of children arrive to school by car. To encourage families to travel by bike, parents in San Francisco have set up “velobuses”. Every day, a convoy of parents and children goes to school by bike, following a predefined route, picking up the children along the way. The idea, popularized by the people of Barcelona, ​​has been taken up in many cities around the world.

Read an article from Washington Post (in English)