There’s a lot of health benefits to being vegan, but also a lot of challenges just to stay healthy because it is hard to get all the nutrients you need to stay healthy in the quantities you need, like iron.

Looking at this statistic, you should be concerned about your health in your ability to go vegan if you are considering it, and not the nobility of global warming. You can offset the 1.5 tonnes CO2 for about $45, which is a LOT less than the cost you’re going to incur in eating meat compared to going vegan, or your doctor and health bills if you don’t go vegan sufficiently to sustain your health.

I’m not against one or the other. I’m a meat-eater, to be upfront. However, I’m not going vegan because I know I can’t without devoting far more of my life to my diet than I care to do to get the proper requirements to not only stay healthy but also to marathon training. I know others who do it and I know I can’t do what they do so props to them. I’m just trying to put things into perspective, which is part of my purpose in having this blog.

However, here is some great advice from the source article below on how to be a “caring carnivore”, a term that must just make the vegans and vegetarians cringe! [Envirostats author] 

How to be a caring carnivore

* Elect to eat one or two organic, locally produced cuts of meat a week rather than eating cheap processed meat every day

* Roast a chicken and live off it for a week, making stock from the bones and eating the leftovers – avoiding wastage

* Investigate meat alternatives such as tofu (pictured left), tempeh, textured vegetable protein and Quorn

* Buy organic milk, or try soya (pictured right), almond, oat, hazelnut or quinoa milk instead

* Chicken and pork are more carbon-efficient and produces less methane than beef

* Be aware of other good sources of protein. These include pulses, beans, nuts, seeds and, of course, soya beans

* Many kinds of bread and even some vegetarian products contain unnecessary milk products like whey, buttermilk or lactose, or eggs. Check the packaging and avoid buying non-organic dairy by avoiding these products 

- Researchers from the University of Chicago for statistics on vegan versus meat-eater emissions via The Independent, Dec 23 2007

- Unattributed source for number of British vegans, via same newspaper source and link above

Apparently, before chopping the cane with large machetes called facão, the workers burn huge swaths of cane fields (seems to the remnants of the cane crops on the ground) to remove dry leaves and drive off snakes and other creatures. The cleared fields are easier to cut by hand, but the massive burns create choking clouds of smoke and ash. Other insightful excerpts are below, from the source story.

Nitrogen compounds naturally vary in global warming potential, but tends to be hundreds of times that of CO2, meaning a given mass of various nitrogen gases can do several hundred times the global warming damage as the same mass of CO2.

Happy New Year, everyone! Thank you for reading Envirostats! [Envirostats author]

During the harvest period from April to November, a layer of ash covers cars, and NO_x levels double in the main sugarcane-growing state of São Paulo, says study leader Arnaldo Cardoso of São Paulo State University.

The equivalent of 35% of the nitrogen applied to cane as fertilizer goes up in smoke, Cardoso says. Some of this comes back down and recycles nitrogen into soil to fertilize plants, but much of it does not. “This may generate impacts such as acid rain, ozone, and changes in the quality of water in rivers and lakes,” Cardoso adds.

Cardoso notes, based on his group’s previous work, that “because this season is also dry, this usually increases the particles in the air.” The combination of particles and gaseous emissions can lead to harvest-time ozone levels in the agricultural regions that are “similar to [those in] a big city like São Paulo,” he adds. A recent study by a different research group tied sugarcane burning to higher hospital admissions for asthma.

This kind of research is useful, says Mark Delucchi of the University of California Davis, “because it is important to characterize all of the environmental impacts of the bioethanol life cycle in Brazil.” The country faces growing concerns about ethanol production, and the workers who harvest cane are believed to be the most vulnerable.

- Arnaldo Cardoso of São Paulo State University via Environmental Science & Technology, Dec 5 2007

- Abstract for original research article in Environmental Science & Technology, Oct 23 2007

The UK makes a lot of clear glass but then exports a large amount of it. Conversely, we import a large amount of green glass, meaning that when it comes to recycling, we tend to have more green glass than clear.

Should we stop recycling green glass then? No. Wrap, a not-for-profit company working to reduce waste and save energy, says there are markets for all recycled glass collected. However, we should make more effort to recycle clear glass bottles and jars. It is also important to buy products made from recycled green glass such as tableware, glasses and jewellery. The Cornish company Green Glass makes drinking glasses out of old bottles. The techniques it uses save 92 per cent of the energy that would be used to make the same product from raw materials. For more details visit greenglass.co.uk and recyclenow.com.

Isn’t it better to re-use? Yes, re-using an item is always the most environmentally friendly option. Use old jars for storing dried goods and give empty bottles a second life as candleholders or vases.

Compare to aluminum’s 95% energy savings in Stat 0007, partly because aluminum so so much more difficult to extract from raw materials than what is needed for glass, including how the much higher temperature required to melt aluminum than glass and its raw materials. [Envirostats author]

- The Telegraph, Nov 10 2007

I love the work of economists when it’s well done and interesting because they really pull out neat numbers, concepts and such in a way that many can understand. In this case, like the picture below shows, pending where you live in the US relative to the line drawn on the map, you should drink wine from your side of the wine, even if from as far away as France for Easterners (US specifically, but extend the line the way it’s going and it probably apply just as well to Canada).

There are also a whole bunch of other interesting statistics about wine, the wine sector, transportation (air transportation is about 11 times as ungreen as ship for the wines), bottles, glucose, energy, methane, etc. I’m not going to try to summarize it here cause economists are also quite efficient with their words, but you can read the original sources, summarized or full report.

Give yourself a glass of wine if you manage to get through it… not because of its dryness, but rather perhaps to solve that headache you might have from the analyses. Well done! I love it!

Too bad I don’t drink alcohol.

Minh Tan
Envirostats author

p.s. This study is not a Life Cycle Analysis, but comes close so I have tagged it in said category for my blog.

p.p.s. I also got my bookplate for my Freakonomics! book a few days ago (autographed sticker to be placed inside book instead of getting book signed). Woot! Woot!

- Dr Vino’s Wine Blog (Dr Vino is one author of report below), Oct 30 2007 

- Red, White and “Green”: The Cost of Carbon in the Global Wine Trade, by Tyler Colman and Pablo Paster for the American Association of Wine Economists, Oct 2007 (0.2 MB)

Just some interesting statistics from a pretty reliable source and great water resource website. [Envirostats author]

- Waterfootprint.org, maintained by the University of Twente in collaboration with the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, the Netherlands