Organic food is filling the shelves and praised like never before, but often it might have travelled a long way before reaching the shelves in the stores. The question I wanted answered was how big an impact the so called food miles (the distance food travels from farm to plate) have on environment. Quite a few studies have been made to conclude if organic or local food is better. For example, a Swedish researcher took a closer look at a typical Swedish breakfast (apple, bread, butter, cheese, coffee, cream, orange juice, sugar). His calculations showed that the distance the breakfast travelled before reaching the breakfast table was approximately one turn around the Earth. A similar calculation was done in Iowa, USA. There the research team concluded that to make one cartoon of strawberry yoghurt the ingredients travelled about 3 550 km. At that point the ice cream hadn’t even left the factory. These numbers, together with the fact that transportation does release a lot of greenhouse gases (especially air and road transport), displays a real problem for the environment. However, to know the environmental impact of food isn’t as easy as calculating food miles. Transportation system and, as with organic food, the process of making the food might have an even greater impact on the environment. For example, potatoes trucked from 100 miles away might have a higher environmental impact than potatoes shipped by rail from 1000 miles away. Still, if looking at the big picture, the food miles only makes up a small part of the total environmental impact of products. DeWeerdt suggests making a life-cycle analysis for food instead of just looking at the food miles. When looking at the production it is obvious that beef and dairy products have some of the highest environmental impacts (see table below). When put shortly, what you eat has a bigger impact than the food miles. Ida Smedlund References:Caputo, V. Nayga Jr, R.M. Scarpa R. 2013. Food miles or carbon emissions? Exploring labelling preference for food transport footprint with a stated choice study. In Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 57, pp. 465-482.
DeWeerdt, S. 2013. Is Local Food Better? In World Watch Magazine, Volume 22 No. 3. SYKE. Article: Climate-friendly food. SYKE, Aalto-yliopisto, YTK, Ilmatieteen laitos. Read: 19.10.2016. https://ilmasto-opas.fi/en/ilmastonmuutos/hillinta/-/artikkeli/ab196e68-c632-4bef-86f3-18b5ce91d655/ilmastomyotainen-ruoka.html%2017.10.2016 According to the UN projects our grandchildren will have 9.6 billion playmates to contend with in the year 2050 Quite a change when compared to the 2.5 billion our grandparents had to make do with in the 1950s. Humanity has grown in leaps and bounds over the last two centuries and nothing underlines it more clearly than looking at the population growth over the centuries. The great success of our species At the cusp of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, humanity's ability to multiply was at the end of its rope. After nearly six thousand years of written history, we had developed the skills, technology and social structure to sustain nearly 1 billion individuals! Most of the increase in population can be accredited to the slow accumulation of available workforce, better tools and more advanced farming methods. The more pronounced leaps, around 16th century for example, are thanks to the spread of new food sources to new areas, most notably the humble potato from South America to Europe and beyond. Bleak lives of the individual
The Reverend Thomas Malthus was one of the first to explain the fact that the farmers of the 18th century England and 400 BCE Athens had the same income; precisely because of humanity’s relentless drive to breed. Every productivity increasing invention, new arable locations or new food source was literally eaten away by the ever increasing population; the advances simply weren’t large enough to have time to translate into increased prosperity for the existing individuals. The great irony of Thomas Malthus’s life was to be that, while his theory explained the previous 58 centuries of human history, the following two seemed to prove him wrong. He didn’t see productivity outstripping population growth. The Great Escape As the last two hundred years have shown, the Malthusian Trap is avoidable. With the drastically increased production capacity brought on by the use of fossil fuels, we finally managed to escape the cycle. The Industrial Revolution generated a virtuous cycle in which investment in human capital, education and healthcare generated technological progress, which in turn increased the demand for human capital. In other words: the more people we have, the faster we come up with new technology, tap into new resources and improve our production efficiency. We seem to have managed to sneak around the Malthusian Trap and continue to distance ourselves from it; education, among other factors, has led to declining fertility rates and science seems impervious to the law of diminishing returns, unlike labor intensive farming for example. There’s always a ‘but’. For a while we seemed to forget one important fact: the resources of our planet are finite. The UN estimates that by the year 2025 there will be 1.8 billion people living in conditions of absolute water scarcity. That’s more than 2 out of every ten humans. Oil, natural gas, phosphorus, arable land and many rare earth minerals are at a premium already. While the last 100 years seem to prove that total resource exhaustion is unlikely, the undeniable fact remains that market prices of practically all natural resources are going up. Thankfully we still have options. First of all we can buy time by investing in resource efficiency and environmental technology; we can make what we have last longer and reduce the negative impacts of human activities on our environment. We can buy even more time by continuing and increasing our efforts to lower the fertility rates in the lesser developed parts of the world; Africa chief among them. All of the above would go a long way to postponing the disaster ahead but do nothing to solve it. We are already feeling the first teeth of the Malthusian Trap: the current economic hardships of the west are partly a result of world’s resources being spread more evenly around the globe. Already we have to fight harder for our market share, for our piece of the cake. The choice We have a choice to make: the choice between a slow slide back into the Malthusian Trap, or getting serious and starting to think of our future as a species and as individuals. If we content ourselves with attempting to perpetuate the status quo, we're unavoidably headed towards escalating conflicts over resources, war, famine and the welcoming arms of the Trap. On the other hand, if we face up to the fact that we're headed towards a disaster, we can do a lot of things to mitigate and delay that disaster. We can adopt green-tech solutions, many of which are presented in this very blog. We can ramp up our efforts to support education in Africa; if the current fertility rates persist there for the rest of the century, the UN estimates a population of 17 billion in Africa alone in 2100. These measures can unfortunately only delay the inevitable. The only choice which allows for continued growth and evasion of the Malthusian Trap is to look beyond Earth. The future of the human race is either to go into space or face a long and slow decline into a shadow of our former selves. Want to know more? Click YES, YES, YES and/or OH GOD(S) YES Mikko Hynninen A question of economic against environmental sustainability Here are the facts. Palm oil is widely regarded as the most versatile oil, with its applications ranging from cooking oil, margarine, cosmetics, detergents, industrial lubricants and even biofuels for cars and power plants. Compared to other oil, palm oil is the highest-yielding vegetable crop, needing less than half the land required by other crops to produce the same amount of oil. This makes palm oil relatively cheap compared to other vegetable oils such as rapeseed and sunflower oil. In addition, palm oil is superior health-wise as it contains more vitamin A and vitamin E compared to any other edible oils and helps reduce the risk of a variety of diseases such as Alzheimer’s or cancer. Bearing all these environmental and economic benefits in mind, no wonder the demand for palm oil, and its level of production have increased significantly in the last few years. Indonesia tops the list by providing more than half (85%) of the world’s supply of palm oil As an edible vegetable oil, palm oil represents the largest share of worldwide edible oil production, at more than 30%, followed by soybean and rapeseed oil at 28% and 15% respectively. And among all other palm oil producers, including Nigeria and Malaysia, Indonesia tops the list by providing more than half of the world’s supply of palm oil. In fact, palm oil is a very crucial part of this G20 member, accounting for 11% of its export earnings of 5.7 billion USD. The industry has also helped Indonesia to relieve its unemployment problem by giving jobs to about 3.2 million people. Not just that, but the worldwide demand for this so called “sacred food” has increased so much that the growth of palm oil production in Indonesia alone averaged up to 8.1% per year from 1987 to 2007. This in turn will bring even more revenue and job employment for Indonesia. So as you can see, it is obvious how important Indonesia’s palm oil production is to the world and to Indonesia’s own economy. The deforestation of Indonesia’s valuable rainforests accounts for the loss of 8 million hectares of forest land in Borneo and Sumatra However it’s not all good news in the palm oil business. There have been a lot of critics and protests on how this particular industry impacts the environment, animals and ultimately the people of Indonesia. The most common criticisms are directed at the weak law enforcement in forestry management, which is causing the deforestation of Indonesia’s valuable rainforests, accounting for the loss of 8 million hectares of forest land in Borneo and Sumatra. This loss of biodiversity and ecosystems is so bad that a third of all mammal species in Indonesia are considered to be “critically endangered”. One species in particular, the orangutan, had become an icon of deforestation in Borneo and Sumatra. Around 2500 orangutans are killed each year and 90% of orangutans’ habitat has been destroyed in the last 20 years due to the development of the palm oil industry. This has alarmed the UN so much that it has started an “emergency conservation” programme in Indonesia’s rainforests. It seems very heartbreaking that such an important part of Indonesia’s economy is stabbing itself in the back by destroying its own very valuable resource. Efforts have been raised to create a sustainable way of developing palm oil production. The “Roundtable on sustainable palm oil” for example has committed to preserving 50% of all the rainforest in Indonesia and utilize the palm oil plantations as a carbon sink. Several NGOs like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth continually protest and raise awareness of the destruction of Indonesia’s rainforests while promoting a sustainable way for palm oil production.
The numbers are there. Indonesia clearly needs all the economic drive the palm oil industry is providing for them. And the numbers are there again. Indonesia cannot afford not to act upon the rate at which their rainforests are being destroyed. And so the questions remain. For how long can Indonesia maintain their current practices? At what cost? Ultimately, to what extent can the importance of economic sustainability surpass the importance of environmental sustainability? Adhitya Prayoga Sources:
The European Week for Waste Reduction is approaching! The program aims to raise awareness on waste reduction with the theme of three R’s: reduce, reuse and recycle. TAMK is participating this year by arranging the annual Stuff Exchange Days on Monday and Tuesday, 24th and 25th of November, and providing info about food waste in the lunch area. We challenge you, fellow student, to take part in minimizing waste by reducing, reusing and recycling! This year we encourage everyone to think especially about the food waste. In developed countries, food waste is a huge problem: it requires lots of energy, land and water to produce the food on your plate, and if it ends up in the bin it has all been for nothing. In Europe we waste food to the extent that by reducing it only by 15 %, we could feed the amount of people in Europe all over again. That’s something to think about! Therefore, please be mindful of your portion sizes and you’ll do the environment a favour! Continuing an item’s life instead of throwing it in the bin is the ultimate eco-deed: compared to new stuff being produced, it takes much less energy to repair what’s broken and continuing to use it for the purpose it was designed for. Also giving your stuff away to have a chance to fill someone else’s needs after you no longer need them is a great chance to reduce waste. Dig through your closets and check if you have unwanted things clogging up your space, and bring it to the Stuff exchange days! The world’s resources are not infinite either, and also for that reason we should always rather recycle the raw material of an item at the end of its life, than throw it in the landfill. Have you for example known, that in addition to recycling the normal paper, cardboard, glass and metal, you can take your worn out clothes that’s not possible to be reused anymore, to the fabric recycling bin at any H&M and they will use it as material for new fabric? (Disclaimer: this is not an H&M ad; I just encourage you to take use of their recycling program! You should still consider whether buying things from them is smart. ☻) In Tampere there’s also a currently ongoing plastic recycling test period where you can drop off your plastic at the recycling bins around the city. Unfortunately there are only eight of those points in the city, the closest one to TAMK being located in Tammelantori. It’s interesting to see how much you can actually reduce your waste by recycling even the plastic! I challenge you to try and guarantee that you no longer need to take the trash out very often! Drop by on Stuff exchange days in Lämpiö near Teiskontie entrance, on Monday and Tuesday 24th to 25th of November, and learn about more ways to reduce, reuse and recycle! You can also find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1512146352367123/?fref=ts Laura Puurunen References: European Week for Waste Reduction. http://www.ewwr.eu/en We have to eat – there’s no way around it. And unless you’re growing potatoes in your backyard and keeping cows in your toolshed, cultivating your food is likely a huge burden on the environment. Conscientious consumers wish to know how to minimize their own impact, and it is said that a rather effective way of doing this is cutting back eating meat. How exactly does meat production compare to vegetable cultivation, and would the planet be better off if we all became celery-munchers and carrot-chewers? The answer is more complicated than one might suspect. This is partly because there are numerous ways of assessing the impact that a certain type of food has on the environment, including the water it consumes, the land it requires or the waste it produces. But there is no dearth of research exploring this very issue, from all possible angles. Environmental Working Group (EWG) did a lifecycle assessment of 20 different types of meat and vegetable proteins on the basis of how much CO2 the production of each emits. According to their findings, beef, lamb, pork and salmon are the worst offenders, but cheese is also right up there, meaning that dairy-consuming vegetarians are not entirely absolved. But the greenhouse gases emitted depend heavily on the fertilizers used, the differences in soil conditions, and the extent to which practices such as cover cropping and manure managements are implemented. One lettuce farm may be much less environmentally friendly than a neighboring one, depending on the farming methods. Full lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of various food products (based on data from EWG)
An article in The Star suggests that instead of comparing meat with plants in terms of the greenhouse gases each generates, or the feed or fertilizer that goes into its production, the comparison should be done in terms of the calories that each item provides. For example, a kilogram of beef contains 2280 calories, whereas a kilogram of broccoli contains only 340 cal, meaning you would have to eat 6.7 kg of broccoli to get the same amount of calories. This requires a whole lot of nutrients, water and space to grow. What the calorie-based approach fails to take into consideration, however, is the calories that went into producing that one kilogram of beef in the first place. Livestock are fed mainly corn and soy, and resources and land that has gone into the growing of these crops could have been used to grow food for human consumption, instead. To avoid this issue, some livestock is fed only grass and hay, which is generally considered a more sustainable choice. Another thing that The Star article points out is that where your meat comes from counts. Should you eat a wild animal whose overpopulation does damage to its habitat, you will be doing a favor to the environment. Of course, this is not an actual solution, because no wild populations of animals could possibly sustain the numbers required by the demand for meat. A tragic example of a species once estimated to number in the billions, but hunted into extinction in the late 19th century largely for its meat, was the passenger pigeon. These North American birds once flew in flocks so large it took hours for them to pass, but once the massive commercial exploitation of the species started, their numbers plummeted, and the last known passenger pigeon died in 1914. But the type of meat and its origin certainly play a part in how environmentally friendly it is, and these issues are often more complicated than seems at a first glance. The grass-feed diet, mentioned above, is better because it leaves the food crops for human consumption, plus grazing can sometimes be done in areas where no crops can be grown, thus providing more efficient use of our dwindling land resources. But in the stomachs of ruminant animals, grass and hay also produce more methane, which has 23 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide; furthermore, the Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations estimates that 20% of the world’s pastures have already been degraded by grazing livestock. In the end, there are so many factors affecting one’s choice of diet that it is almost impossible to give any bite-sized advice. That doesn’t stop environmental groups from trying. The report by EWG boils down to a few basic things: get more of your protein from lentils, beans and tofu, consume only organic dairy products, waste less and buy only what you eat, choose chicken rather than beef, and try to at least have one meat-free day per week. Many big changes start from little ones. Martta Paavola |
Want to be an author?Write for us and we will publish your writing right here on our blog! It can be about anything related to environmental engineering Archives
May 2019
Categories
All
|