YOUR IMPACT BY GOING GREEN | if you go plant-based every day for a year

Numerous studies have suggested that “Consumption of healthy and sustainable diets presents major opportunities for reducing GHG emissions from food systems and improving health outcomes” (IPCC, 2019). “The impacts of animal products can markedly exceed those of vegetable substitutes, to such a degree that meat, aquaculture, eggs, and dairy use ~83% of the world’s farmland and contribute 56%-58% of food’s different emissions, despite providing only 37% of our protein and 18% of our calories” (Poore, 2019).

In Green Monday, we have been working with different international subject experts to develop a comprehensive set of credible education message as well as to estimate scientifically, within the best defined boundary, the impact metrics of diet shift. While an international framework of quantifying food purchasing and consumption activities in terms of associated GHG emissions and various indicators is not yet in place, a “Carbon Reduction Opportunities” could generate an indicative figure to demonstrate the positive impact due to diet change.

The opportunity of shifting from a normal (baseline) diet to the “no animal scenario” is estimated to be 2.1 tons CO2e per person per year in a global averaged setting (Poore, 2019). This could be translated to 1.92kg CO2e per meal reduced (assuming three meals a day with environmental impact evenly distributed).

A research led by the researchers from the HKU Department of Earth Sciences showed that HK has one of the highest meat consumptions per capita in the world at 664g/day/capita (equivalent to two pieces of 10-oz steak). Pork and beef consumption are the highest, with average daily consumption four times higher than the UK. The research, led by Dr Christelle Not, was published in Environmental Research Letters (2018) and estimated a Hong Kong specific GHG emissions by the “consumption-based accounting method” which better reflects the actual scenario observed in Hong Kong (YY Yau et al, 2018).

We are grateful to Dr Christelle Not and Dr Benoit Thibodeau who provided the Green Monday team valuable information and guidance in setting up a Hong Kong specific dataset. The consumption-based methodology has estimated that, specifically in Hong Kong, shifting to a vegan (no animal scenario) diet could create an reduction opportunity of 5.38kg CO2e per meal, and 5.05kg CO2e per meal in the ovo-lactro-vegetarian scenario.

Please refer to the methodology paper for detailed reference [download here].