In New York and London,
Otarian is billing itself as the world’s first low-carbon restaurant aiming to serve as much locally-grown and sourced produce and create the least carbon dioxide.
“Otarian is based on my passion for, and dream of, a sustainable planet, and this vision is paramount to the concept and implementation of the Otarian philosophy,” says CEO Radhika Oswal. “It is the tangible display of my hope in the intelligence of human kind to understand, accept and adapt to a more sustainable way.”
Taking Responsibility For How We Eat
Often when it comes to food, we like to have many choices, we love our meat, we want our avocados all year round. Ignorance is bliss. But what food karma are we creating? And more importantly what are the environmental consequences of our ‘supersize me’ culture of eating?
Even the UN are now saying that if we all become vegetarians we can become a more sustainable planet. Environmental vegetarianism is choosing to become vegetarian in order to save the planet’s resources.
"Meat eating is creating bad karma and you are also creating a vicious cycle. It's destroying us environmentally, economically and socially,” says Radhika Oswal.
Environmental vegetarians call for a reduction of first world consumption of meat, especially in the US. According to the United Nations Population Fund, each U.S. citizen consumes an average of 260 lbs. of meat per year, the world's highest rate. That is about 1.5 times the industrial world average, three times the East Asian average, and 40 times the average in Bangladesh.
The Facts About Meat Eating
The UN’s top climate scientist Rajendra Pachauri states that people should consider eating less meat as a way of combating global warming. UN figures suggest that meat production puts more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than transport.
If we take the US as an example again, the more than 10 billion land animals raised for food each year in the United States excrete massive quantities of urine and feces – an equivalent of five tons of waste for every human being. The UN have pointed out that the livestock industry worldwide is responsible for more greenhouse gases than the whole of the transport sector.
Meat-free Mondays is being hailed by Paul McCartney - “One of the most effective things any individual can do to help the environment is to eat less meat” he says in the UK’s Sunday Observer.
As a step in the right direction, he is encouraging people to become vegetarian just one day a week – saving the environment one meal at a time. He feels it would be too challenging and nagging to say that everyone should become vegetarian, but one day a week is manageable.
“One of the main contributors to global environmental degradation is the livestock industry,” says Otarian’s Radhika Oswal. “The effects of large-scale meat production are wide-spread and impact unsustainably on almost all aspects of the environment whilst creating other economic and social costs. Greenhouse gas emissions, inefficient utilisation of resources, deforestation, water pollution, land degradation, unfair trade, ill health and obesity are just some of these costs.”
Environmental Defense estimates that, “If every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetables and grains … the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off of U.S. roads. … If every American had one meat-free meal per week, it would be the same as taking more than 5 million cars off our roads. Having one meat-free day per week would be the same as taking 8 million cars off American roads.”
Put simply, becoming vegetarian consumes a lot less land and water and creates a lot less waste.
Land-wise, it takes 3.25 acres of land to produce food for a meat-eater; while food for a vegan can be produced on only 1/6 of an acre of land. Large amounts of grains and soybeans are grown to feed farmed animals. Would you believe you can actually feed around 1.4 billion people on the grain and soy grown to feed US cattle?
Turning to our liquid assets - It takes more than 4,000 gallons of water per day to produce a meat-based diet, but only 300 gallons of water a day are needed to produce a totally vegetarian diet.
In September, The World Water Week in Stockholm will be told the growth in demand for meat and dairy products is unsustainable.
"The basic problem is that food is the main global consumer of water, with irrigation taking 70% or more of all the water we use, apart from huge volumes of rainwater,” says Anders Berntell from Siwi (Stockholm International Water Institute).
But how do we factor all of this into our daily lives? Otarian’s menu is full of veggie treats – burritos and curries, salads and soups and each item lists its carbon footprint compared to its meat or egg equivalent. It creates an awareness about the effect each bite has on the environment. Then take this awareness into the supermarket with you.
Otarian have also been chosen to “road test the new Greenhouse Gas Protocol product standard” and are trying to source as much locally and seasonally as possible under what they call the ‘proximity principle.’
“We stand at the crossroads of the past and the future,” says Radhika. “Vegetarianism, or at the very least a substantial decrease in meat consumption, is a simple, immediately available way of reaching many environmental, social and economic sustainability goals.”
Check out…
www.otarian.com
www.meatfreemondays.co.uk
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