The Best Way to Celebrate Earth Day

Happy Earth Day 2011! If you rode your bike to work today or planted a tree, that's fantastic. But if you're passing on meat and dairy products today to help the planet, that's even better.

For damage to the environment, meat takes the icky, Earth-destroying first-place prize. Consider the following:

• Producing a single pound of meat emits the same amount of greenhouse gases as driving 40 miles in an SUV.  
• It takes 10 times as much fossil fuel to produce one calorie from animal protein as it does to make one calorie from plant protein.
• Animals raised for food in the U.S. produce 89,000 pounds of waste per second without the benefit of waste-treatment systems.
• If every American  skipped one meal of chicken per week and opted for plant-based foods instead, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off of U.S. roads.

Celebrate Earth Day today by opting for delicious, meat-free dishes and sharing this with your eco-conscious Facebook friends.
 

Written by Michelle Sherrow