There are now apps and websites which encourage you to reduce the carbon footprint of your diet, such as Part-Time Carnivore and The Climatarian Challenge. They ‘gamify’ the challenge of reducing your “meaty days”. You can set monthly targets to reduce your meat consumption or form teams to compete against each other. It is a fun way to tackle a serious problem!
This week’s Big Issue (issue 1303) has an interesting piece entitled ‘Vertical farms won’t save us…yet’. While several small-scale vertical farms are achieving modest success, larger scale production is still proving difficult despite significant technological advances in recent years. The problem for producers is the cost; set-up and production costs are high, but salad and vegetables are […]
This interesting article in Fresh Produce Journal discusses the current situation regarding food waste in the UK. Despite a lot of media and public attention to this issue in recent years, the UK still only rescues less than 10% of its surplus food. A lot of food is sent to anaerobic digesters to produce energy, which is of course better than sending it to landfill. However, food […]
3.5 million people in the UK now eat a plant-based diet, according to a poll by Professor Carolyn Roberts and comparethemarket.com. This is around 7% of the population, which is a surprisingly high proportion and a significant increase in numbers compared to research conducted by The Vegan Society in 2016. The desire to combat climate change appears to be an important motivation in changing consumer behaviour.
‘Cultured meat’ may be coming to a supermarket near you within the next few years! In an effort to de-couple meat production from its negative environmental impacts, a number of US companies are attempting to produce beef and chicken in bioreactors. If that isn’t sci-fi enough for you, the Dutch company ByFlow already has a 3D food printer on the market. But, as this BBC […]
The World Resources Institute estimates that global food waste represents more greenhouse gas emissions than any country in the world except for China and the U.S.! This BBC article introduces four interesting U.K.-based projects which aim to reduce food waste. For instance, you can pick up last minute bargains from cafes or restaurants using the Too Good To Go app. This saves you money and avoids food going in the bin!
A blog by SILCI researcher Mark Wilson, who recently attended the Oxford Real Farming Conference. He discusses some of the consumer-facing innovations that were presented at this year’s conference. Read the full blog here.
A new journal has been released entitled ‘Locavore’ and it covers a wide range of food-related topics. You can read about food waste initiatives in Rome, the emerging ‘alt– meat’ market, and how climate change threatens to exacerbate economic migration from agricultural regions. It is definitely worth a look here.
This excellent article by Claire Hoolohan and her colleagues sheds some light on the greenhouse gas emissions associated with our own dietary choices. Applying a life cycle analysis to a range of popular foods, Hoolohan presents different actions that consumers can take to reduce our personal carbon footprint. Becoming a vegetarian may not be for everyone, but choosing to eat chicken or pork instead of beef and lamb can have a significant […]
A number of companies have started constructing large greenhouses on the roofs of buildings to produce food, such as Lufa Farms in Canada or Urban Farmers in the Netherlands. Here is the clever bit; not only do these greenhouses reduce the energy required to heat the building, but the residual heat from the building can be directed into the greenhouse to increase productivity. This is already happening in the Ecco Jȁger ‘integrated greenhouse’ in Switzerland. So your lettuce and tomatoes may […]