'Veganism is the single biggest way to reduce our environmental impact'. In 2020 an oxford study found that becoming vegan can reduce an individual's carbon footprint from food by up to 73 percent. Our proposal involves encouraging people to make the change towards plant-based eating. Here are some reasons why: As a group of non-vegans, with some of us consuming more animal products than others, we are not perfect examples of how to make carbon conscious eating choices to combat climate change. However, we do believe that with the correct information and education we and other people would be more likely to change their eating habits. With a similar initiative to the traffic-light labelling on pre-packaged food items, showing the nutritional information of the product and using a colour-coded system to make it easier for customers to judge the nutritional content of their food, we have designed a way to also rate food on its environmental impact. Using calculated greenhouse emissions for the products, colour coded with red for very polluting and green for less polluting, we would make it compulsory for food manufacturers to include this figure on their labels in a hope to encourage people to make more environmentally conscientious choices.
We believe that unless people have numbers presented to them, enabling direct comparison and an informed choice to be made, the significantly higher environmental impact of animal products will never be realised. We considered using an app or educational resource to allow people to check the carbon footprint of the products they are buying, however, decided that this may not be as accessible or convenient as labelling the packaging.
Great approach - if I may add a suggestion, I would say the foods need to be classified based on their metric - whether it is sustainability, carbon footprint, health factors, fairtrade factors, etc. - and not just vegan biased.
While mass produced meat is obviously bad for the environment and health, there are also the bad sides of vegan supply chain. For example, monocrop agriculture is also extremely damaging to the environment due to the unnatural crop cycles, fertilizers, ecological imbalances and all the animals that get killed when using large farm equipment. On the other hand arguably raising chicken in the backyard may be better.
Point being, good and bad supply chains are split between vegan and on vegan and putting numbers will help make the information objective rather than emotional and also ensure that a move to veganism happens with the right products and not replace one problem with another
Hello team,
I find your suggestion really smart. Great thinking! I think that your concept description is simple, easy to follow and makes the general idea seem easy to put into practice. Here are some extra thoughts for your final submission:
- Could you make a connection of your suggestion with any of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals?
- What are the criteria of assessing the environmental impact of the food? (Material waste, labour, imports/exports, water consumption, etc? )
- What amount of carbon emission would be the green, orange and red labels? Would the labelling change if the same product was sold locally or internationally? It would count positive if you gave a couple of examples of how your idea is inclusive of different kind of markets.
- It's a good thing you mention how you thought using an app or educational resource and explaining why you concluded to the labelling instead. It shows your thought process and your responsible thinking about your final outcome idea. Could you explain a little more in what aspect the labelling is more convenient ? From reading your whole proposal I assume you consider this convenient for the consumers, but have you thought about the complications such a system would have for the food production companies?
- As I imagine the financial implications to the food manufacturers might create a conflict with your idea of labelling, would you consider setting up an independent non-governmental organisation to do the environmental assessment? Or seek support by any of the existing global food organisations to put the labelling obligation into practice? Can you think of any examples of food organisations that would be potentially interested in your idea?
- Have you considered your costs of implementing your proposal? How would you fund it?
- It would be good if you could elaborate at your conclusion on how this concept could make a real difference on the world. What are the expected outcomes of this labelling if it becomes real in long term?
I hope you find my feedback is helpful. Great work and good luck 🙂