The Benefits of Plant-Based Diets for the Environment

Adopting a plant-based diet can be a great way one reduces their environmental footprint.

Compared to meat-based diets, plant-based diets require less emissions to be produced. To produce meat, farmers have to create vast amounts of grazing land – which involves deforestation of trees, monoculture of certain types of crop, large amounts of water used to nurture the animal feeds, and many energy spent in maintaining the facilities that animals use, such as their shelter and slaughterhouse.

On the other hand, plant-based diets doesn’t require the majority on the list above but only needs smaller amounts of water and energy to be cultivated and harvested. Plant-based diets are also more efficient in their energy content. In the natural world, plants always form the first trophic level – the producers – while animals are a few trophic levels above in the place of consumers.

It is also known that energy is lost between each trophic level. As much as 90% is lost between each trophic level and only 10% is retained. This means that if we consume plants, we will be getting lots of energy at a faster efficiency. If we consume meat, we will be gaining energy that is left over from lots of energy loss and wastage, which makes our acquisition of energy not that efficient.