November 19, 2008 at 11:59 am (Food, LC, Social Responsibility, Waste Reduction & Recycling)
Think about how much food you eat in a day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and those snacks in between. Now think about all of the food that you didn’t eat; the leftovers from ballooning restaurant portions or the extras in the fridge from dinner Friday night. Next time you sit down to eat, take a hard look at your plate and try to think about what you really plan on eating. Do you have time to eat everything you’ve served yourself in a 15-minute lunch break? Should you really be eating a salad that size?
Strive to throw nothing away from your plate. As cliché and silly as it sounds, there are starving people in this world. Children in particular have fallen victim to the hunger that looms over some of the most impoverished continents. Basic foods have become a precious and finite commodity in our world. It is disheartening to know that children go to school every day without breakfast and growling stomachs and are expected to still do their best.
No, you cannot airmail your leftovers to Africa or India to feed the hungry there, but taking a minute to think about what is on your plate before you start eating is a great step towards considering the waste that occurs all over our planet every second of the day. Are you really going to eat all of that?
- Vanessa
Editor’s Note: This post is one in a series published by students in the Sustainability Learning Community at KU. Additional posts from this series can be found under “LC” on the Categories list.
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November 19, 2008 at 11:49 am (Food, LC)
Being outside makes people happy. Studies have shown that kids who play outside learn better than kids who stay indoors all day. Such benefits probably carry over to some degree into adulthood. When you garden, you gain exercise, fresh food, and a sense of accomplishment. Gardening also has many environmental benefits, such as improving soil, air, and water quality, reducing the amount of processing and transportation used to get vegetables, and providing habitat for insects and other wildlife.
Campus Garden is a KU Center for Community Outreach project that encourages people to get outside while providing fresh vegetables for campus use. The gardeners meet twice a week (Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings during growing months) to plant, tend, water, and harvest tomatoes, spinach, okra, squash, peppers, herbs and whatever else we are given. Campus Garden, located next to Grace Pearson scholarship hall, always needs more volunteers. The project is currently small, but with more volunteers could become a large producer of obviously local veggies. For more information contact Margaret Tran at earth@ku.edu
- Jessica
Editor’s Note: This post is one in a series published by students in the Sustainability Learning Community at KU. Additional posts from this series can be found under “LC” on the Categories list.
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November 19, 2008 at 11:27 am (Climate Change, Food, LC)
Being a vegetarian isn’t just for those who don’t want to eat meat anymore, it is increasingly popular among environmentalists. While driving a Prius and turning off your lights may be one step towards ‘greening’ your lifestyle, a vegetarianism is a simpler and cheaper way to not only stay healthy but to stay eco-friendly. The production of meat products is not usually considered a productive step in the right direction but after looking at facts about methane and the greenhouse effect, I was convinced.
In the past I was a vegetarian for almost a year, discontinuing only for health reasons, my only reason for giving up meat was to try something different. Why not? After researching the effects of methane on the environment for a discussion project, I was ready to try it again, this time with other motives in mind. The United Nations recently said, “Livestock is one of the top three or four contributors to climate change”.
The University of Kansas does wonderful things to help the environment by planting gardens and recycling, but I have noticed that when I am in the dining halls looking for some basic vegetarian food, all I seem to come up with are carrots and salads. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that being a vegetarian means eating veggies, but where’s the motivation when you are forced to live off of wilted salad from your dorm’s cafeteria, well there’s little. I propose that the university takes a second look at it’s option and even considers locally grow food. I may just sound like a ranting granola eating hippy, but the truth is; I eat green to go green.
- Grace
Editor’s Note: This post is one in a series published by students in the Sustainability Learning Community at KU. Additional posts from this series can be found under “LC” on the Categories list.
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November 19, 2008 at 10:16 am (Food, LC, Waste Reduction & Recycling)
With all the talk about sustainability people think that means on a giant global scale. So with this thinking the masses don’t think they can make a dent and thus don’t try. But there is a simple thing you can do to help out the environment and save money on fertilizer. It is called composting and it is very easy to do. All you need is an open space outside in which to dump your organic waste like food, or any other natural item. I grew up on a farm and was exposed to many different fertilizers both natural and processed. I had noticed that the plants with the compost did as well if not better than the plants with store bought fertilizer. This makes the point that while store bought brand fertilizer is more convenient it is less economically sound than composting your old food, and it works just as well.
- Dominic
Editor’s Note: This post is one in a series published by students in the Sustainability Learning Community at KU. Additional posts from this series can be found under “LC” on the Categories list.
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November 19, 2008 at 10:15 am (Food, LC, Sustainability Shift)
Growing up my best friend became a vegan in 4th grade. A vegan? What’s that? How could you have a lifestyle that doesn’t involve ice cream, cheesy pizza, or even baked cookies that contain eggs? When I was young me, along with many of my fellow classmates didn’t understand why someone would choose to not eat food that seemed to have absolutely nothing wrong with it, not to mention was deliciously scrumptious. My friend, as an animal lover, didn’t want to be a part of anything that hurt or imposed cruelty on any type or animal. Little did she know as a fourth grader that she was actually changing her lifestyle to act in one of the most effective ways to stop global warming and be environmentally friendly, which is to simply not eat meat.
Meat industries are one of the leading sources of the greenhouse gases that lead to global warming. In 2006 United Nations report found that the meat industry produces more greenhouse gases than all the SUVs, cars, trucks, planes, and ships in the world combined. Not to mention that raising animals for food is an incredible waste of resources. An area of rain forest the size of seven football fields is destroyed every minute to make room for grazing cattle, but each vegetarian saves 1 acre of trees every year. The raising of cattle for food leads to overgrazing of grasslands and deforestation is partially caused by the clearing of forest to grow feed for livestock. This land could be used to grow food for humans, an option that is better for the most people and much more sustainable. We waste food that we could feed to starving third world countries to feed livestock the livestock that sustains much smaller portion of people. About 20 percent of the world’s population, or 1.4 billion people, could be fed with the grain and soybeans fed to U.S. cattle alone.
If we could possibly solve world hunger through just a shift in eating habits, do you think people would go for the idea of giving up meat and fish, food that is part of every culture? Could America go for the idea of veggie burger barbeques? Would Japan be able to shift to no fish sushi? Maybe asking the world to become completely vegetarian is a bit of a stretch but I do think people being conscious of the amount of meat they eat or even just being conscious of the possible damage they are causing to the environment by supporting meat industries is a step in the right direction for creating a more sustainable, environmentally friendly world.
- Danielle
Editor’s Note: This post is one in a series published by students in the Sustainability Learning Community at KU. Additional posts from this series can be found under “LC” on the Categories list.
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