Cottage Farming

According to a story I heard on NPR’s Morning Edition this morning, eating meat takes a bite out of your carbon footprint. Specifically, it’s the production of the meat that takes its toll on the environment.

As global demand for meat products has increased in recent years, so has awareness of the environmental damage that the industry causes. Modern meat production uses enormous amounts of energy, pollutes water supplies and creates greenhouse gases.

An interesting quote in the piece was that by decreasing your yearly meat intake by 20% has the equivalent carbon offset as replacing your average mid-size sedan with a Prius. As they said Americans consume about 40% more meat per year than Europeans, it seems we’ve got the wiggle room there to make this happen.

Another snippet in the segment talked about how the adverse environmental impact would also be offset by eating meat that’s produced more locally. A lot of the issues arise from large scale feed farming and transportation.

In short: Think globally, and eat locally.

Assuming we’re all gonna’ buy stuff anyway… the folks at UTNE Reader have teamed up with Moment Marketing to create EarthMoment.com. The online shopping site sells stuff from standard retailers (Apple, Barnes and Noble, Circuit City, Macy’s, Sharper Image, etc.) at what appears to be MSRV. They then donates half of their commission-based revenues to Carbonfund.org, a nonprofit organization supporting projects that reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

It seems like a relatively good idea… though I’d prefer to see them work out an integration model with existing shopping portals. By building their own, they’re going to have to get the word out it exists for it to succeed.