How Your Shopping Choices Affect The Environment

Are you aware of the impact your shopping choices may have on the environment? Many people don’t realize the tremendous impact that agriculture and the production of food have on the environment, or that they can help lessen that impact with their purchasing decisions. Here’s a closer look at this issue.

Fifty percent of the world’s habitable land is dedicated to agriculture. Agriculture also requires the use of 70% of the world’s freshwater, and food represents a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions. Agriculture also is responsible for 78% of the freshwater and ocean eutrophication, a term that means polluting water with nutrient-rich substances. Agriculture also has an impact on wildlife — excluding humans, livestock makes up more than 90% of the mammal biomass on earth, outweighing wild mammals by more than 15 to 1. In fact, agriculture has a major influence on the majority of the 28,000 species of wildlife threatened with extinction.

Livestock requires much more land than crops grown for human consumption. Pastures and farms that grow animal feed account for more than three quarters of all agricultural land, even though they produce less than 20% of the total calories consumed by people. Eating less meat and using plant-based alternatives could help reduce the number of livestock required to feed people throughout the world and lessen the impact on the environment.

Consumers can also make a difference and reduce the environmental impact of the food they consume with their shopping choices. To learn more about what you can do to help protect the environment, check out the accompanying resource.

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