Reducing the carbon footprint of our sets is not only about getting rid of diesel generators and refilling water bottles. The food we offer at crafty and catering can make a surprising difference in our environmental impact. Consider that around the world, livestock use 30% of the planet’s total land – in fact, we use 8 times more land to feed animals than we do to feed humans! 

Beef, in particular, requires 20 times more land and emits 20 times more greenhouse gas pollution than common plant proteins like beans. Because of their size, cattle require a lot of land, grain and water. It’s estimated that it takes 1800 gallons of water to make 1 pound of beef – that’s 4 times the amount needed for the same amount of chicken, and 10 times more than to grow a pound of wheat. 

Beef increases carbon pollution when forests are cleared for pasture and ranching (happening globally, at an alarming rate) because we lose the carbon-capturing ability of trees. The subsequent transportation of all those animals and the meat from them also burns a lot of fossil fuels.

But carbon is not the only greenhouse gas from beef. Unlike pigs and chicken, cows are ruminants, and their digestive systems produce a lot of methane gas. Did you know that methane traps heat 21 times more than CO2? Cows produce another greenhouse gas through their manure: nitrous oxide, which is 300 times more warming than carbon dioxide! Add to that the 17 billion pounds of nitrogen fertilizer used every year to grow corn and soy for cattle feed, which in turn runs off into rivers that flow into oceans and cause algae blooms that are toxic to sea life. 

Don’t feel like going fully vegan for the planet? You can still make a difference! It’s been estimated that if all Americans ate plant-based for just ONE day a week, the positive environmental effects would be equivalent to taking 7.6 million cars off the road for a year!* If catering reduced serving beef to once in a while (or never), there would be a significant decrease in production’s GHG emissions. Chew on that for a while…

*Center for Investigative Reporting

Annabelle Wilczur
Assistant Business Agent and Sustainability Lead