My girlfriend rides a bike instead of a car, recycles glass and plastic. Since she has known her “personal CO2 footprint” , she has also been thinking about her meat and sausage consumption. Whether at Greenpeace, the Federal Environment Agency or the European Union – you can find a CO2 calculator everywhere on the Internet. You can use it to easily determine your own contribution to carbon dioxide emissions. It is well known that air travel, heating energy and driving a car play a major role in this. But our diet? Yes, butter, cheese and meat also contribute significantly to climate pollution. A study commissioned by the consumer protection organization foodwatch has shown how strong it is. In the production of animal and vegetable foodsthe entire agriculture in Germany releases 133 million tons of CO2 – almost as much as road traffic with 152 million tons. foodwatch Managing Director Dr. Thilo Bode is therefore calling for a rethink of our eating habits. Regardless of whether you prefer to buy organic or conventional food. “Anyone who wants to do something for the climate can e.g. B. reduce the consumption of dairy products and meatBode recommends. Organic foods are also involved in the greenhouse effect: one kilogram of beef from organic ox fattening produces 76 times as much greenhouse gas as one kilogram of organically produced wheat. With almost 95 million tons of CO2, animal husbandry contributes about 71 percent to the climate effects of German agriculture. It’s not just about burping and farting cows, goats and sheep, which emit the greenhouse gas methane when they digest it, but also about drained peat soils that are now being used as grassland.
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Bogs store carbon dioxide
Bogs bind extremely large amounts of carbon dioxide. This is released during cultivation for green animal fodder or pasture. For climate protection, these soils would have to be wetted again. “The simplest measure is to stop using peat soils for agriculture. That would already reduce harmful greenhouse gases in agriculture by 30 percent,” says Thilo Bode. Although just 8 percent of the agriculturally used area in Germany is peat soil, it accounts for almost a third of CO2 emissions.
Thilo Bode believes that a further reduction in greenhouse gases can be achieved by making agriculture more ecological. Especially in the field of plant cultivation, the advantages over conventional cultivation outweigh the disadvantages. The production of organic wheat produces less than half of the CO2. The reason is the lower use of nutrients. Because mineral nitrogen fertilizers, which are used in conventional agriculture, require a lot of energy for production and are therefore associated with high CO2 emissions.
A lot of fertilizer, more damage to the environment
And heavy fertilization results in higher nitrogen surpluses on arable land, which lead to even more climate-damaging nitrous oxide emissions. Organically produced food therefore relieves the environment considerably. Meat, dairy products, growing vegetables – what role does the production of CO2 actually play in fish? According to Greenpeace expert Martin Hofstetter, there are still no comparable figures. The Öko-Institut in Freiburg is currently working on a study on this subject. While the fuel consumption of the fishing vessels and the energy for cooling at sea have to be taken into account for sea fish, it is the emissions that arise in the production of feed for farm fish and freshwater farming that have to be taken into account.
The recommendation to us consumers should therefore be: Eat more organic whole grains, vegetables and fruit for an intact climate. Do we have to give up meat altogether? No, but everyone should reconsider their consumption. The recommendations for nutrition coincide – how practical! – by the way with those for climate protection. So: Meat no more than once or twice a week, as recommended by the German Society for Nutrition. But it is not just agriculture that is damaging the climate. Consumers generate almost a third of the greenhouse gases themselves: by cooking and cooling food, by washing dishes and by driving to the shops. So it makes sense to buy energy-efficient stoves, dishwashers and refrigerators that are sized to fit the household. Also the optimal loading of the dishwasher,Sound simple? It is! What matters is that it becomes a matter of course for every consumer.
Flying food damages the climate
Equally important are the transport routes of the food , the processing and packaging. Anyone who buys strawberries in winter must know that they are helping to pollute the climate with carbon dioxide that is produced when they fly in. Consumers who prefer regional and seasonal goods will hardly have any flight goods in their shopping basket. Organic apples from Israel or milk and yoghurt from Bavaria on the supermarket shelves in Schleswig-Holstein are also ecologically nonsensical. And hardly any consumer is aware that a conventional head of lettuce from a heated greenhouse causes 30 times as much CO2 as one from the open field.
Finished products promote the greenhouse effect
Whether fries or ready-made puree – every processed food has a higher share of the greenhouse effect than fresh eggs or pure fruit and vegetables from the field. The Öko-Institut’s study “Ernahrungswende” states that this is particularly evident in the case of frozen French fries and dried potato products such as mashed potatoes or dumplings. The dewatering of the fresh products or the deep-freezing consumes additional energy.
Conclusion: We can eat, enjoy – and protect the climate at the same time. In any case, we should take a close look at our eating habits, because it depends on what and, above all, how often we eat it. “With a climate-optimized diet, greenhouse gases can be reduced by more than half,” says Dr. Karl von Koerber from the Munich consulting office for nutritional ecology.
I’ll do it like my girlfriend from now on. So that my “CO2 footprint” in terms of nutrition is even more climate-friendly.
- Label for the climate
Since 2007, the German “Stop Climate Change (SCC)” seal has been used to designate companies or products that reduce greenhouse gas emissions according to strict specifications. Patron: the former Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin. Currently e.g. For example, two organic juices from Voelkel and bratwurst from “Ökoland” were awarded the logo.
- What is actually going on in the air?
Next to oxygen, CO2 (carbon dioxide) is the most important gas on earth. Plants need it for photosynthesis. It forms a kind of protective layer in the atmosphere. Too much leads to global warming. Methane is a colorless and odorless gas. It is expelled by ruminants such as cattle or sheep. It is formed during digestion in the stomach. Excessively high methane concentrations promote the greenhouse effect.
