Global Sustainability Activities – Pre-Program
Activity 2: What's On Your Plate?
Part One
How It Works
This activity will introduce you to one of the most effective ways to reduce your personal footprint on the environment: changing what you eat and how you eat. The video below will explain why certain foods, like beef and lamb, create a much larger carbon footprint than foods like fruits and vegetables.
How You Do It
- Watch the video The Diet that Helps Fight Climate Change and think critically about your own daily diet.
- Using your observations notebook, keep a "food log" of the food you are eating each meal. Make sure to write down as many details as you can. Consider questions such as:
- How many/did any of your meals include meat?
- Do you know how your food was grown and where it came from? How hard was that to figure out?
- At the end of each day, reflect on what steps you could take to reduce the environmental footprint of your daily diet. Examples:
- Could you perhaps choose to eat meat one less meal a day/week?
- Could you choose to only buy organic vegetables or grow your own in a garden?
Take Away Points
- It is important to be conscious about the decisions you make concerning your food consumption. Thinking actively about what you eat can improve your habits.
- Even the smallest positive change to our day to day lives can make a large positive impact over time.
- It will be important to take note of the different ways people access, prepare, and consume food in other cultures and countries. Does their average diet have a greater or lesser carbon footprint than your diet back home?