“There’s a lot of different rules, and even if there’s an understanding of what can be recycled, there may be different rules in different jurisdictions,” says Jeffrey Raymond, chief of communications and community affairs for Baltimore’s Department of Public Works. “In terms of communicating all this, we have to walk a line between getting people to make recycling as simple as possible, and not making it so intimidating and difficult that they don’t recycle at all.”

Below are a few recycling best practices:

1. No bags. Like really, no bags.

Grocery bags dissolve into potentially harmful microplastics and, in the case of ingestion or entanglement, hurt and kill animals. They’re pretty much the worst. Even though these bags are technically recyclable, you must go to a drop-off area to do that, not your curbside bin.

Plastic bags are the number-one contaminant in recycling loads. Plastic bags act as “tanglers,” getting caught in machinery and shutting down the equipment.

In some cases, like in Montgomery County, Maryland, when plastic bags full of recyclables arrive at the facility, workers are not allowed to open the bags, says Griselda Guillen of the county’s recycling center. That means the entire bag, even if it’s full of water bottles, is considered trash.

Though grocery bags may be posterchildren of plastic pollution, sandwich bags, bubble wrap, plastic wrapping and other flimsy materials that don’t survive the poke test — where the plastics are soft enough to push your finger through it — are also prime candidates for commercial drop-off areas, not the residential recycling bin.

This also means you shouldn’t bag your recyclables. Instead, dump them loosely right into your blue bins.

Solution: Buy a couple canvas bags and get some reusable containers.

2. Small things are big problems

Don’t recycle anything smaller than a credit card. That includes straws, bottle caps, coffee pods, plastic cutlery, paperclips, and a million other tiny things that creep into our daily lives. These objects are too small to be sorted and can jam the recycling equipment.

At Montgomery County, Maryland’s Recycling Center, these contaminants can shut down machines 10–15 times a day, says Guillen.

But what about plastic lids and metal bottlecaps? you might ask.

Helen Lee of Alexandria, Virginia’s Resource Recovery Division points out that “if you put the plastic cap back on the bottle, it becomes bigger than a business card, so it would be captured [by the sorting equipment].”

According to the Association of Plastic Recyclers, when plastics are grinded into pellets, the different numbered plastics have different weights and can be separated easily after that.

That’s not so easy for metal bottlecaps, which tend to fall off glass bottles. You can sometimes bring these metal bottle caps to companies that take scrap.

Solution: Be conscious of what you throw in that recycling bin.

3. Make sure it’s clean, empty and dry

Food waste contaminates whole loads of recyclable material, rendering them useless and fast-tracking them to landfills. In the U.S., food waste contaminates 25 percent of our recycling loads.

“The message we try to have residents remember is clean, empty and dry,” says Lee.

But just how clean?

“I always tend to tell people that their recyclable material should be clean enough to use again,” says Howard Lee of Washington, D.C.’s Office of Waste Diversion. “So, if you’re putting things in the bin and you’re concerned about rodents or rats or anything like that, then chances are your recyclables are not clean.”

With that in mind, be wary of advertising at your local fast-food joint. I recently saw a paper taco bowl that read, “Please Recycle. We Care About the Environment.” That’s fake news. You can’t recycle something covered in salsa and beans. You may have better luck composting that bowl, but again, it’s complicated.

You can also recycle pizza boxes… if they’re not covered in cheese and grease. If they are, you can always tear off the clean part and recycle that.

Solution: Just as the rule states, make sure your recyclables are clean, empty and dry. It’ll take seconds and if everyone did it, it would save tons of recyclables going to the landfill.

4. Combined materials are trash

Recycling only works when like materials are together. Unfortunately, items like plastic-coated coffee cups, laminated paper and paper-bubble wrap envelopes from the mail can’t ever be separated, which means they’re trash.

Solution: Try to avoid buying nonrecyclable materials that can’t be separated. And when you can, shop local to cut down on the carbon footprint of your products.

5. Know your plastics

Not all plastics are treated equally. Rigid plastics are recyclable, labeled by resin codes 1 through 7. Generally, the higher the number, the less recyclable it is. Most recycling centers will recycle plastics 1 and 2 without a problem. Past that, it gets tricky.

Furthermore, a lot of plastic just isn’t recyclable curbside. As noted earlier, you can’t recycle plastic bags or films. Additionally, you can’t recycle anything that can tear like paper. That means no cracker bags, chip bags or cereal bags.

“With plastics, it does get so confusing,” says Erin Hafner of Baltimore’s recycling program. “Clamshell containers, cutlery, plastic straws — all that stuff that ends up in the [recycling] bin.” And it shouldn’t.

Solution: Check your city’s recycling website for the number the city takes.

6. Stop wishcycling

When it comes to recycling, one of the worst things you can do is wishcycle. That’s when we optimistically put non-recyclable objects in recycling bins. When we do this, we contaminate whole loads of otherwise recyclable materials.

“A lot of people wish that this material can be recycled, and it seems like it’s made out of the materials that could be recycled, but sometimes it’s not,” says Helen Lee.

Cities have certain thresholds to meet when they send their recyclables to third-party waste management companies. If they surpass these thresholds — in other words, if there’s too much trash mixed into the recycling load — that entire load could end up in a landfill.

So when you wishcycle, you screw up the entire system.

Solution: Don’t wishcycle.

7. Teach yourself

At the end of the day, we can’t know everything. There’s a bunch of stuff we accumulate over our lives — batteries, electronics, paint cans, toys, clothing, wood — and they, unfortunately, all have separate drop off centers or special instructions for recycling.

Solution: Hit up your local recycling website, and teach yourself what you need to know. This article only gets you so far.

Demand change

Of course, you can change your individual behavior: Clean containers better, only recycle what’s recyclable and most importantly, reduce your overall use.

“[Be] mindful of how you purchase products,” says Howard Lee. “Start with reducing the amount of waste you create. Once you’ve gotten the hang of reducing your waste — maybe not buying so many water bottles — you can start to reuse things that you have and recycle or compost before getting to a landfill.”

But don’t let industry off the hook, either. Manufacturers and lobbyists have created a single-use empire built on this false narrative of recycling as the be-all-end-all solution to our consumption habits. Get mad. Make some noise. Demand solutions, not delays. That materials like plastics are unavoidable in our market economy is not your fault.

Check out EARTHDAY.ORG’s End Plastic Pollution campaign, find additional ways to reduce your plastic waste and make a pledge to reduce your use of plastic.

The post 7 Tips to Recycle Better appeared first on Earth Day.

The coronavirus brings the best, as well as the worst, out of people. 

As millions of healthcare workers and volunteers sacrifice their personal wellbeing for those affected by coronavirus, messages of hope and unity surface in every sector of society. Unfortunately, so too do messages of hate and ignorance. 

This “tsunami of hate and xenophobia,” as António Guterres, United Nations’ secretary-general, called it last week, has erupted in racial slurs and attacks, both online and in person. In addition to deeply held societal stereotypes, many of these comments are rooted in ignorance and misinformation.

Some social media platforms have adjusted how they deal with these comments. Just this week, Twitter announced it is marking COVID-19 misinformation as fake news. Other platforms like YouTube have been pulling misinformation videos from their site. 

These are steps in the right direction, but we must continue to address these negative comments everyday by reframing the conversation about coronavirus through our actions and words. 

“I ask everyone, everywhere, to stand up against hate, treat each other with dignity and take every opportunity to spread kindness,” Guterres said.

No greater example of this exists than in the healthcare industry, culminating in the actions and attitudes of nurses. For the first time ever, International Nurses Day falls in the middle of a pandemic, reminding us of the power of empathy against a destructive and deadly virus. 

If you’ve ever had a medical procedure, you know firsthand the power of this empathy. Research even shows that caring for others can reduce stress, increase happiness and increase our sense of social connectedness — all increasingly important during times of isolation.  

Nurses and healthcare professionals are models of empathy in uncertain times. They’re also stewards for human health. And how they combat the coronavirus pandemic can be a model for how we deal with another global crisis: climate change. 

In the dire and dark times of coronavirus, we can still remind ourselves and others of the gifts of nature — what we’ve lost, what we stand to lose, what we still can fight for — as well as the struggles people all over the world face. 

“I have seen stars in the sky for the first time in 40 years,” says Karuna Singh, Earth Day Network’s director of Southeast Asia, who lives in India. As the coronavirus pandemic has caused air pollution, including India’s dense smog, to plummet, Singh can also see bright sunsets for the first time since her childhood.

Climate change, like coronavirus, is changing our world and affecting people differently. And to tackle both crises, we must stay resilient and project empathy. As we strive to restore our Earth amid the coronavirus pandemic, let nurses and healthcare professionals remind us of this responsibility. 

The post Practicing empathy in the coronavirus and climate crises appeared first on Earth Day.

The post Street art campaign Global Halt launches on Earth Day appeared first on Earth Day.

The coronavirus pandemic, and the shutdowns that come with it, is changing every part of our lives. This includes how we use electricity.  

Around the world, electricity use is plummeting. Since December, the United States use is down 5%, the European Union is down 6% and India is down a whopping 18%.

With most businesses closed and stay-at-home orders in effect, many people can do little but hunker down in place. And, though the pandemic often makes us feel powerless, it also gives us a chance to reassess our individual behaviors, like our power consumption.

And it starts with switching to green power.

In the U.S., nearly all residences are connected to a centralized grid, which gets most of its energy from fossil fuels. Swapping out fossil fuels like natural gas and coal — both of which emit greenhouse gases that warm the planet — for renewables like wind and solar is one of the easiest ways to reduce your carbon footprint.

We’re already heading in the right direction. Despite the drop in oil and gas prices that typically push us toward increased use of fossil fuels, renewable energy sources are set to make up over 20 percent of electricity use in the U.S. for the first time. This is up from 18 percent last year and ten percent in 2010. 

All it takes is a quick phone call or internet search to start the process. 

The simplest and most common way to switch to green energy is simply contacting your local utility company. Here’s how it works:

Utilities distribute energy that they get from an energy provider. Normally, that energy provider gets energy from a mix of fossil fuels. By switching to green power, you’re essentially just switching energy providers — while keeping your utility company. That means it’s very little hassle for you, the consumer. You’ll still get a bill from your same utility company — the supplier will just be a clean-energy provider.

More than 600 out of the roughly 3,300 utilities companies in the U.S. offer this option. If yours is not one of them, you can still buy renewable energy certificates (RECs). Since all power distributed in the U.S. is connected to the grid, buying RECs ensures that your slice of the grid (how much energy you use) is powered by renewable energy.

The switch to green power varies by situation and locale, but the EPA has a lot of resources to get started.

Finally, although it’s more of a commitment, you can create or offset your own energy, through solar panel installations. There’s an upfront cost here, but solar panel costs have been falling, and the investment pays for itself over time through lower electricity bills (plus, solar panels can increase a home’s value).

Many of us feel powerless right now. But we must remember that individual actions — like switching to green energy — can collectively lead to change. On April 22, the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, join us for the largest online mobilization in history.

The post Feeling powerless? Switch to green power appeared first on Earth Day.

In 1960, a 26-year-old woman without a college degree went to Tanzania to study chimpanzees in the wild.

Sixty years later, acclaimed primatologist Jane Goodall is still hard at work.

Over the last century, chimpanzees in the wild have dwindled in number from 1 million to as few as 340,000. Goodall has spent her career fighting for protection from this extinction, as well as their exploitation.

But through her research, Goodall showed us so much more than the need to preserve a species — she showed us the similarities between chimpanzees and humans.  

“I came to understand how like us they are,” said Goodall in an interview with the New York Times last year. “I’d seen them using tools and making tools, and it was clear they had emotions like happiness, sadness, fear. That they had a dark and brutal side, but also love, compassion, altruism.”

Over her career, Goodall has received countless honors, being made a Dame of the British Empire, appointed a United Nations Messenger of Peace and named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2019.

Recently, Goodall weighed in on the coronavirus pandemic. The virus, which originated in animals, more easily spreads when humans destroy wildlife habitats and sell, buy and consume wildlife in illegal markets. 

“Many species of animals and plants have become extinct,” she said in a video message. “And our too-close relationship with wild animals in the markets or when we use them for entertainment, has unleashed the terror and misery of new viruses.”

But amid these challenges, Goodall reminded us of our humanity. 

“We’re capable of love and compassion for each other,” she said. “Let us also show love and compassion for the animals who are with us on this planet. Let us all live in peace and harmony together.”

To learn more, check out Earth Day Network’s conservation and biodiversity program to learn how you can help preserve our planet.

Photo at top: UN Messenger of Peace Jane Goodal addresses a Student Observance of the International Day of Peace. Photo credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

The post Jane Goodall reminds us of love and compassion amid the coronavirus pandemic appeared first on Earth Day.

Climate change is here and now, disrupting natural systems and wiping out species. And nowhere is this destruction more apparent than in coral reefs.

Warming and more acidic waters from climate change are pushing corals to their collective breaking point, with corals expected to face reductions of 70–90 percent in the next 20 years, according to research presented last week at the American Geophysical Union’s Ocean Sciences Meeting.

Through her large-scale ceramic wall structures, Los Angeles-based artist Courtney Mattison draws awareness to the plight of coral reefs, and the delicate ecosystems they support.

“Everyone can play a role in [restoring our planet],” says Mattison, who recently joined Earth Day Network’s Artists for the Earth campaign. “I hope my work is making a difference and inspiring people to use their unique skills to do what they can do to protect our oceans.”

Part of the appeal of Mattison’s works is the scale. Her installations, which resemble coral reefs, comprise hundreds of individual porcelain and clay pieces that cover entire walls. And with eccentric shapes and colors, they create intricate portraits and landscapes of marine life.

But as aesthetically striking as these delicate installations are, what they represent is even more compelling. In her works, Mattison pairs colorful installations with white and gray objects, detailing one of the most common indicators, and reminders, of stressed corals: bleaching.

“It’s really hard to visualize climate change unless you can see its impact,” she says. “Corals offer a really stark visualization of climate change because they bleach.”

Coral reefs are sensitive to warming temperatures, and with an increase in the number of global heatwaves, climate change is throwing off a delicate balance. Corals have a symbiotic relationship with zooxanthellae — a photosynthetic algae that lives within the tissues of corals. These microscopic algae provide their hosts with most of the energy corals need to survive and are responsible for the incredible colors of the reef.

When corals are stressed however, they expel their zooxanthellae, exposing what’s left: white coral tissue and the skeleton underneath. Many of Mattison’s works reflect this absence of color that she calls “ghostly and ominous.”

In spite of the existential threats that corals face, Mattison still sees hope in the work of countless scientists, artists and activists, especially youth, to use their platforms and voices to promote environmentalism and inspire change.

“It’s exciting that so many people feel galvanized to help and contribute, and I think each of us has a unique talent or skill that we can use to inspire each other,” Mattison says.

Just as individual coral polyps build up coral reef, so too can individual voices merge to create a movement. Learn more at Artist for the Earth, and join EARTHRISE, the largest, most diverse mobilization in history. Together, we can fight climate change.

Image at top: Courtney Mattison views her work, “Our Changing Seas III.” Photo courtesy: Courtney Mattison.

The post Artist Courtney Mattison details beauty, and bleaching, of coral reefs appeared first on Earth Day.

As the world marks half a century of the modern environmental movement, we need to learn from the lessons of the American civil rights movement, says Hip Hop Caucus Founder and CEO Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Jr., in a recent interview with Earth Day Network.

Between droughts, rising sea levels, mass extinctions and extreme weather, climate change is irreversibly upsetting the balance of nature. And while climate change affects everyone, those most hurt by climate change will be people of color and of lower income, findings backed by the United States government’s Fourth Annual Climate Assessment.  

Those same communities are already disproportionately affected by environmental hazards: According to the NAACP, among those living within three miles of a coal power plant, 39 percent are people of color.

“Climate change is a civil rights issue — we have a right to clean air and clean water,” says Yearwood. As communities have fought — and continue to fight — for equality, now “we’re also fighting for existence.”

Yearwood is the founder and CEO of Hip Hop Caucus, whose mission is to empower communities impacted by injustice to create a “just, sustainable, more prosperous world for all,” according to the organization’s website. That world includes an inhabitable Earth in the face of our current climate crisis.

“[Hip Hop Caucus] lifts up the issues of young people and people of color to be at the forefront of this conversation [about climate change],” says Yearwood. “We are looking at the voices of those who are first and worst impacted by the climate crisis and finding ways to fight pollution and poverty at the same time.”

To fight these dual challenges as Earth Day marks 50 years, Yearwood says the environmental community must learn from the lessons of another movement born in the 20th century: the civil rights movement.

“There are so many people on every part of this planet who are saying, ‘Enough is enough,’” says Yearwood. “That will to put your body against the gears of the machine and put it to a grinding halt, that mentality from the civil rights movement is what we need right now — to be uncompromisingly fighting for justice, for our planet, and fighting for future generations.”

Yearwood points to three key learnings from the civil rights movement that the modern environmental movement must adopt to take on our climate crisis.

First, the fight for civil rights in the U.S. required “endurance, bravery and grit” to push our society to a safer, more just path. Yearwood argues that the environmental movement of today must adopt a similarly stubborn tenacity to keep fighting in the face of setbacks and adversity.

The civil rights movement also required an understanding of structural dynamics and the importance of politics and legislation. Activists understood that individual action alone wasn’t enough to tip the scales. Racial equality required policy change, and the leaders of the civil rights movement understood and wielded legislative power strategically.

As Yearwood puts it, “They understood that demonstration without legislation leads to frustration.”

Finally, Yearwood advises that the environmental movement needs to push voting. In the 1960s, Yearwood says, “even though sometimes their vote wasn’t protected, and they were still fighting for their vote to count in many places, [the civil rights movement] still understood the power of the vote, they understood what that meant, and so they didn’t give it away.”

“In this election year, we must do everything to ensure that our vote matters, and that we’re out voting,” Yearwood continues.

The year 2020 has 65 major elections worldwide, including the U.S. presidential election. An electorate that holds public officials accountable is a powerful thing, and today’s environmental movement, if unified, can build the pressure to do that.

“We’re putting the policies in place that will begin to reverse the climate crisis,” says Yearwood. “From every sector, we’re all coming on one accord.”

April 22, 2020, will mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Now is the time to gather the energy, chaos and passions of our era and mobilize it into action. Join an Earth Day event near you or register one.

“We have a generation that is rising up,” says Yearwood. “We’ve seen destruction, but we’ve also seen the will of humanity. The power of people to survive and fight for the next generation is all that matters.”

The post To save the planet, learn from the civil rights movement, says Hip Hop Caucus President Rev. Yearwood appeared first on Earth Day.

Over a century ago, a young muckraking journalist wished to inspire a socialist revolution over the “veritable fortress of oppression” that was industrial capitalism. Instead, he inspired revulsion over what we eat. 

“I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach,” Upton Sinclair famously said, regarding his 1906 novel The Jungle.

The Jungle follows a Lithuanian immigrant, Jurgis Rudkus, whose American Dream is quickly chewed up and spit out by Chicago’s meatpacking industry. Tragedy after tragedy strikes Jurgis, who loses his family, hope and dignity to the industrial machine of the city’s urban jungle.

But it wasn’t Jurgis’s personal struggle that outraged the public most — it was the novel’s grotesque depictions of meatpacking, such as this one: “The meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one — there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit.”

The novel famously sparked the United States’ first food and safety laws, the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act, which laid the groundwork for future consumer protection legislation.

But today, Sinclair’s vision of a more humane meat industry is far from realized. Though we may no longer sweep poisoned rats into our sausages, the same factors Sinclair detailed in early-20th-century meatpacking — ruthless efficiency, industrialism and, above all, profit — drive today’s factory farms, now more than ever.

The Jungle is alive and well in the factory farm industry of the 21st century.

Factory farming accounts for nearly all meat production in the United States, and its footprint is growing: In the 15-year period between 1997 and 2012, factory farming rose 20%. In nearly the same time, the number of dairy cows on factory farms increased by 120%, with hogs increasing by 70% and broiler chickens by 80%.

These increased numbers are pushing the planet to its breaking point: While meat in the time of The Jungle sickened workers and consumers, today it’s poisoning our planet. In fact, industrial animal agriculture is a huge contributor of some of the world’s biggest environmental problems.

Animal agriculture accounts for anywhere between 14.5–18% of global greenhouse gas emissions (that’s as much as every plane, train, automobile and ship on Earth). What’s more, the meat industry accounts for about 70% of agriculture land usage, causing  deforestation, habitat destruction, biodiversity loss and water contamination. The wastewater and agricultural runoff from factory farming also create ocean dead zones, devastating ecosystems and biodiversity both by land and by sea.  

Still, our appetite for cheap meat has barely wavered since Sinclair’s time — only about 4% of Americans identify as vegetarian or vegan today, per recent polling by Earth Day Network and the Yale Program for Climate Change Communication.

Perhaps our American love affair with cheap meat is aided by the separation between Americans and their meat.

In The Jungle, when Jurgis and his family tour one of the pork-packing buildings, they are forced to face the meatpacking industry, and all the brutality that comes with it, for the first time:

“Now suddenly [the machine] swooped upon [the hog], and had seized him by the leg. Relentless, remorseless, it was; all his protests, his screams, were nothing to it — it did its cruel will with him, as if his wishes, his feelings, had simply no existence at all; it cut his throat and watched him gasp out his life.”

All Jurgis can mutter is, “I’m glad I’m not a hog!” Like meat-eaters today, Jurgis’s awkward jokes establish emotional distance between consumers and their food, enough distance to blindly accept the harsh reality of animal agriculture and all that it entails, including its contribution to a more polluted and warmer world.

Just over 100 years later, novelist Jonathan Safran Foer echoes similar sentiments in his 2009 book Eating Animals: “Having little exposure to animals makes it much easier to push aside questions about how our actions might influence their treatment.”

These two books, separated by more than a century, demonstrate that preference may uphold the entire existence of factory farming in the U.S. (and, increasingly, around the world): Despite all we know of the perils of factory farming — the suffering the animals go through, the stress it puts on our planet — is our only justification for this industry taste?

Sinclair seems to suggest as much toward the end of The Jungle: “Meat is obviously more difficult to produce than vegetable food, less pleasant to prepare and handle, and more likely to be unclean. But what of that, so long as it tickles the palate more strongly?”

Habits are hard to break, and meat has long been a staple of the American diet. But now we know about meat’s impact on our environment. To ignore these impacts is to adopt irresponsibly wishful, even willfully ignorant, thinking. And whether we act on our stomach — or our hearts, as Sinclair wished when he wrote The Jungle — we must act.

“We can’t plead ignorance, only indifference,” writes Foer. “We have the burden and the opportunity of living in the moment when the critique of factory farming broke into popular consciousness.”

On today’s anniversary of the publication of The Jungle, consider plant-based foods — foods with much lower carbon footprints than factory-farmed meat — for a more just and sustainable future. Learn more at Earth Day Network’s campaign Foodprints for the Future.

The post As ‘The Jungle’ marks its anniversary, factory farming remains our 21st century nightmare appeared first on Earth Day.

Americans are open to plant-based diets — but they don’t know where to start.

That’s according to a new report, “Climate Change and the American Diet,” published this morning by Earth Day Network and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

The report, which surveyed 1,043 American adults, found that more than half of Americans are open to eating more plant-based foods, but they don’t know what to buy. Additionally, that same number said they’d eat more plant-based foods if they better understood their meals’ environmental impacts.

“We have a huge opportunity here to educate the American public about the power of plants and how [plant-based diets] can play a positive role in slowing down the pace of climate change,” said author and entrepreneur Nil Zacharias, who moderated the press conference that accompanied the report’s release Thursday morning.

The problem, however, is that many Americans aren’t hearing or talking about their food’s carbon footprint. More than half of those surveyed have rarely heard about the environmental impact of food in the media. And nearly two-thirds said they rarely talked about how their food affects climate change. That same number said nobody has ever asked them to eat more plant-based foods.

In short, people don’t have the information, and aren’t having the conversations, to change their eating habits.

“[There is] a huge gap between people’s understanding of the reality of food system versus what they think in their heads,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Communication and co-author of the report, at the press conference.

That gap, as well as lack of effective communication, means that despite recent high-profile global reports on the connections between food and climate (like Special Report on Climate Change and Land from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), we’re missing an opportunity to drive climate action through diet change.

A step toward plant-based diets

The good news from the report is that, overwhelmingly, Americans are open to incorporating more plant-based foods into their diets. Over 90% of those surveyed said they’re willing to eat more fruits and vegetables, and roughly half said they’re willing to eat more plant-based meat and dairy alternatives.

“We’re at the early stages of what may be a profound shift in the American diet,” said Leiserowitz. “That shift is driven by … growing concerns about health, growing concerns about the environment and environmental values, drop in cost for [plant-based] alternatives, and technological change.”

A fifth of people surveyed reported already using plant-based dairy alternatives between two to five times a week. This willingness coincides with the growing popularity of plant-based foods. Though only 4% of those surveyed identified as vegan or vegetarian, more and more people are eating plant-based alternatives.

These diet shifts may help to lessen some of meat’s tremendous strain on our planet’s resources, as well as the industry’s significant carbon footprint. Animal agriculture accounts for at least 14% of global greenhouse gas emissions and is the largest single-contributor of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that has a warming potential 26–34 times higher than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period.

Companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have eased the transition from meat, creating plant-based meat alternatives that mimic the texture and taste of beef. Delicious and convincing plant-based alternatives may help convert meat-eaters, as taste is a large barrier to plant-based diets, according to Thursday’s report.

Chefs like Erick Castro, who runs the Instagram account How To Be Vegan In the Hood, are attempting to take down this perceived barrier, making delicious food out of all plant-based ingredients. Castro, a panelist Thursday morning and an ambassador to Earth Day Network’s Foodprints for the Future campaign, spoke to Earth Day Network after the event.

“I started How to be Vegan in the Hood because I wanted to show people you can still eat what you enjoy — all the flavors and textures — without having to harm all the animals, without having to harm planet Earth,” said Castro.

An additional barrier to plant-based diets is perception. Meat is a staple of most American diets, with 71% of survey respondents eating beef alone at least two to five times a week. To slash that number requires an incredible change of behavior.

“A lot of people are afraid they’re going to lose that culture, that taste [of meat],” said Haile Thomas, Foodprints ambassador and CEO and founder of The HAPPY Org, at the press conference. “But when we change our perceptions, we … realize that what’s on our plates is a form of purpose and contribution to the world, [and] that’s when you really activate the best of humanity.”

Plant-based barriers

While Thursday’s report outlines a willingness for people to eat more plants, it also highlights the many barriers people perceive to eating a plant-based diet.

In addition to not knowing what food to buy, half of Americans think a plant-based main course is more expensive than a meat-based main course. Also, nearly three-quarters of lower-income and half of higher-income Americans said it costs too much too buy plant-based foods.

Cost, however, may not be as prohibitive as some people think.

“Most plant-based foods are actually cheaper,” said Leiserowitz. “That’s a key misperception in many people minds.”

A healthy plant-based meal is roughly the same price as a healthy meat-based meal. Consumer misconception may stem from the price of plant-based meat alternatives like Beyond Meat, which go for about $9/pound. But beans and lentils, both packed with protein, are only about $1/can, if that.

Access is also an issue, especially for lower-income Americans. Many Americans who want to eat plant based are limited by their distance from a grocery store and access to fresh produce. The Yale-Earth Day Network report suggests that communities need to invest more to ensure all consumers have access to fresh food.

“I think focusing on food deserts, making sure food knowledge is shared equally, would be a tremendous impact for everyone,” said Castro.  

On the flipside, over 90% of Americans surveyed said health is an important motivation to choose plant-based foods. With that in mind, over half of American surveyed said they are willing to eat less red meat. As reports continue to link red meat consumption to heart disease and weight gain, and health concerns are ever present in consumers’ minds, more people may consider more plant-based purchases in the future.

Better communication for a greener planet

When it comes to climate change, our current consumption trends are simply unsustainable. With the large carbon footprint of animal agriculture, consumer openness to plant-based foods marks a step toward a greener future.

“When we think about our food choices, we don’t think about how [those choices] affect the planet,” said Earth Day Network Food and Environment Director Jillian Semaan, who co-authored the report. “The most immediate action we can all take individually is to stop eating meat and dairy, or at least reduce your meat consumption.”

To get here, we must drive this point home. The findings from today’s report from Yale and Earth Day Network suggest there are plenty of opportunities for climate communicators to get their message out and influence the public’s diets for both personal health benefits and long-term benefits for the planet.

“By focusing on what motivates people, we have a better chance of using language and communicating to them in ways that will get them to try something different and new,” said Zacharias, speaking to the report’s significance. “We need to change this narrative around climate change from one of fear and dread and start to look at it as an opportunity … We have the power to make the right choice every time we sit down to eat.”

Earth Day Network is building a future where everyone has access to low-impact, healthy food that’s good for us and for the Earth. Learn more about how to fight climate change with diet change at Earth Day Network’s campaign Foodprints for the Future.

The post Many Americans open to plant-based diets, new study finds appeared first on Earth Day.

Nothing is stronger than love — except maybe climate change.

With February 14 around the corner, you may be thinking about things other than the environment. But climate change affects everything, including all the special trappings we use to celebrate Valentine’s (and Galentine’s) Day.

Valentine’s Day is a multi-billion-dollar industry, with the United States dropping about $27 billion to celebrate love each year. In a warmer world, however, many of our February favorites — like chocolates and wine — will be at risk, and some are just plain unsustainable — like roses.

We’re not here to ruin your date night but to kick you into action: The sooner we act on climate, the sooner we can preserve these cherished traditions. Or at least adjust these traditions to accommodate a warmer world.

So, how stable is the future of Valentine’s Day?

Roses are red… and carbon intensive

Let’s start with the cut-flower industry. Over half of men (and 16% of women) celebrating Valentine’s Day this year will purchase flowers for that special someone. And it’s no surprise — flowers, especially roses, have long been a staple of Valentine’s Day.

Roses are beautiful, durable and (relatively) long-lasting — what better symbol for love? But their durability is also their downfall, at least as far as their carbon footprint goes.

Because they can withstand a lot (again, like love), roses can travel thousands of miles — and they often do. In 2018, 250 million roses were produced for Valentine’s Day, according to the Society of American Florists. Nearly all these flowers were imported to the U.S., often by plane. The number of Valentine’s Day flowers imported from Colombia alone jumped seven-fold between 2009 and 2015.

To make matters worse, roses need to be refrigerated when they’re shipped, and refrigerants are some of the most potent greenhouse gases. According to research organization Project Drawdown, refrigeration management is the number one solution to global CO2 reduction.

Once you consider flights, refrigerants, chemicals to preserve the flowers and plastics for wrapping, these flowers don’t smell quite as sweet as they once did.

Eat, drink and be worried

Over half of Americans celebrate Valentine’s Day, according to the National Retail Federation, and many will do so over dinner, perhaps paired with a fine wine. Wine is a Valentine’s Day staple, but from Burgundy to Napa Valley, wineries are struggling to cope in a warming world.

Should the world warm by 2 degrees Celsius, we could lose over half our wine-growing regions worldwide, according to new research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Four degrees of warming could wipe out as much as 85% of lands that currently produce good wines.

That’s because grapes are extremely sensitive to temperature changes — the warmer it is, the earlier the grapes must be harvested to avoid wilting.

“In some ways, wine is like the canary in the coal mine for climate change impacts on agriculture, because these grapes are so climate-sensitive,” said report co-author Benjamin Cook in a statement.

But it’s not just how fast these plants grow that we must worry about — warmer temperatures affect even the taste of fine wines. Sugars increase in hotter weather, and these sugars ferment into alcohol. Worldwide, these extra sugars have pushed average alcohol content in wine from 12% in the 1970s to 14% today.

Grapes also have delicate ripening and maturing processes that can be thrown off as temperatures soar. Like a fine wine, we need to respect that aging process.

Melting chocolate

Dessert isn’t immune from climate change, either. In fact, chocolate is extremely at risk in a warming world.

Cocoa only grows in a thin band of ecosystems near the equator. But these regions are becoming water stressed and drought stricken, killing cocoa trees and significantly decreasing cocoa yields. Nearly 90% of areas that currently grow cocoa will be less suitable to do so by 2050.

As temperatures increase, cocoa lose valuable water through a process called evapotranspiration, and that water is unlikely to be replaced by rain when droughts are more frequent. In other words, climate change is wiping out the small patch of land that we can grow cocoa on even as American demand for chocolate rises.

For the cocoa market to survive, we need these growers to adapt and develop more sustainable practices. If not, we’re headed for a future without chocolate.

What’s a green lover to do?

Instead of letting this kill your Valentine’s Day buzz, check out some of our solutions to make your Valentine’s Day full of love — for your partner and the planet.

First things first. We all love flowers but consider skipping the roses this year. Instead, use The Canopy Project, our tree-planting campaign, to offer your loved one a bouquet of trees this Valentine’s Day. Trees are a sustainable, zero-waste option that absorbs carbon dioxide, prevents erosion and builds local economies.

Americans will spend $2.3 billion dollars on flowers this Valentine’s Day. The Canopy Project uses a $1 for 1 tree model, so those dollars could be planting 2.3 billion trees across the globe, one tree for every three people on Earth. Plus, a tree is a gift that lives on, giving back to the planet year after year. Sustainable, empowering and long-lasting — what’s more romantic than that? Buy your bouquet today.

If you do dinner, try a plant-based meal for the evening. Animal agriculture accounts for at least 14 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, with beef creating the biggest chunk of emissions. So, whether you’re out at a nice restaurant, or in for an intimate date night, skip the steak for something more sustainable. Check out our campaign Foodprints for the Future for more plant-based tips.

Afterward, grab some chocolate (make it plant based by sticking to dark chocolate) from a sustainable, fair-trade chocolate brand. Many chocolate brands donate to Rainforest Alliance, which helps farmers adapt to climate change. There’s also Endangered Species Chocolate, which donates 10% of its net profits to partner organizations that support species conservation, habitat preservation and humanitarian efforts.

Sure, Valentine’s Day is a day of love, but who says sustainability can’t be sexy, too? 

This post was last updated on February 16, 2021.

The post Show some love for the planet this Valentine’s Day appeared first on Earth Day.