Meatless Mondays

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Meatless Mondays
... 42U's ongoing efforts to reduce our carbon footprint and promote sustainable solutions

by CEO Alan Mamane

In addition to promoting corporate responsibility in energy efficiency, as an environmentally conscious company we are always looking for ways to be more efficient and reduce our own carbon footprint. One such initiative we feel strongly about is Meatless Mondays - the global campaign to make the world more sustainable by reducing our meat consumption by 15% - 1 day per week.

Environmental and Sustainability Considerations:
The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) 2010 report Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Consumption and Production: Priority Products and Materials (PDF), highlights the rapidly growing human population, and the sustainability and environmental impact of meat consumption. According to the report, "Agricultural production accounts for a staggering 70% of the global freshwater consumption, 38% of the total land use, and 14% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions"⁽¹⁾. The United Nations Food an Agriculture Organization (FAO) goes further in their more targeted Livestock's Long Shadow report. According to the FAO report Livestock is "responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO₂ equivalent. This is a higher share than transport"⁽²⁾ and generates 65 percent of human-related nitrous oxide, 37 percent of all human-induced methane, and 64 percent of ammonia emissions, "which contribute significantly to acid rain".

Even more alarming are the findings in the recent World Watch report Livestock and Climate Change (PDF) which states, "livestock and their byproducts actually account for at least 32,564million tons of CO₂ per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions.⁽⁴⁾" They came to that calculation by factoring in the, "GHG emissions involved in clearing land to graze livestock and grow feed, keeping livestock alive, and processing and transporting the end product⁽⁵⁾".

Health Considerations:
The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) estimates that "no less than 60 percent of human pathogens and 75 percent of recent emerging diseases are transmitted from animals to humans⁽⁶⁾". Other research clearly documents the health benefits we can all achieve by reducing our meat consumption. These benefits include limiting our risks of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. For more in-depth analysis on why you should consider going meatless one day a week, I recommend reading Dr. Colin Campbell's book The China Study which details the connection between nutrition and heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

Meatless Mondays:
“Meatless Mondays” is a global campaign to help address these sustainability, health, and environmental concerns. Wikipedia describes it as follows, “Meatless Monday is an international campaign that encourages people to not eat meat on Mondays to improve their health and the health of the planet. Reducing meat consumption by 15% (the equivalent of one day a week) lessens the risk of chronic preventable illness and has a strong positive impact on the environment.⁽⁷⁾”

Meatless Monday Content - We created the flash and heart image on this page to help promote Meatless Mondays. Please feel free to copy and use them Royalty Free. We also have larger images and other versions available. To help other websites promote Meatless Mondays, we would be happy to pull our company logo and info off the last page of the flash and replace it with your logo and text - at no cost. Let us know how we can help you promote Meatless Mondays

Millions of individuals and a growing number of businesses, organizations, city governments, and entire school districts are choosing to go meatless at least one day a week.⁽⁸⁾ The Meatless Monday website has some wonderful information including why you should consider going meatless, a Who's Who of famous people and companies who have gone meatless, and what the media has to say about the importance of this movement: www.meatlessmonday.com/meatless-monday-in-the-media.

42U.com and Meatless Mondays:
I am proud to share that all DirectNET companies including 42U have been active participants in the worldwide “Meatless Mondays” campaign. Additionally we offer free, meatless lunches for all our employees and we actively promote Meatless Mondays to the million plus IT Professionals who visit our websites.

data map of IT Professionals visit 42U.com from almost every Countries / Territories
IT Professionals visit 42U.com from almost every Country / Territory
(actual data map of website visitors - the darker colors indicate the higher visitor concentrations)

With their technical knowledge and talents we are hoping this will have a very positive domino effect as they use their technical gifts to inform and educate others about the importance of adopting Meatless Mondays.

The Meatless Monday meals we have been ordering are 100% free of any animal products. Each week we order meatless meals from local restaurants. Some chain restaurants like Noodles and Company and Chipotle Mexican Grill clearly market their vegetarian/vegan options, other restaurants are happy to oblige a meatless request and can easily modify their dishes to accommodate - especially if you give them a day or two notice in advance. It also helps to have a palate that is open to the wonderful international options we have available to us. The dishes we have ordered for our Meatless Mondays and company sponsored events have included dishes from Delicatessens, American, Chinese, Italian, Thai, Mexican, Indian, and Middle Eastern restaurants. In addition to our Meatless Mondays efforts, any food served at all our company sponsored events is also meatless and vegan.

Going Meatless one day per week is easy! It's good for the environment and for the health of you and your family. We encourage you to consider going meatless one day per week, and sharing this info with your company or organization as well as your vendors, customers, and your friends and family.

For more information on 42U click here

References

(1) Hertwich, E. G., Voet, E., & Tukker, A. (2010). "Assessing the environmental impacts of consumption and production." United Nations Environment Programme - International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management. http://www.unep.org/resourcepanel/documents/pdf/PriorityProductsAndMaterials_Report_Full.pdf (Pg. 2)

(2) Steinfeld, H., Gerber, P., Wassenaar, T., Castel, V., Rosales, M., & Haan, C. (2006). "LIVESTOCK'S LONG SHADOW: environmental issues and options." Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM (Pg. xxi)

(3) Steinfeld, H., et. al. (Pg. 114)

(4) Robert Goodland, R., & Anhang, J. (2009). "Livestock and Climate Change: What if the key actors in climate change are… cows, pigs, and chickens?." World Watch. November/December 2009. http://www.worldwatch.org/files/pdf/Livestock and Climate Change.pdf (Pg. 11)

(5) Robert Goodland, R., & Anhang, J. (Pg. 11)

(6) Steinfeld, H., et. al (Pg. 270)

(7) Meatless Monday - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (2010, August 07). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meatless_Monday

(8) Some of the cities and school districts that have officially declared to go meatless one day a week include: San Francisco, Ghent, and Baltimore School District.

About Alan Mamane:

Alan Mamane is CEO and Founder of 42U, a 20 year old energy efficiency consulting company focused on providing Facilities and Data Center Managers with objective and trusted, independent information on Data Center Power and Data Center Cooling best practices along with KVM over IP and Remote Power lights out management to help them reduce their organization's power consumption. Our Data Center Energy Efficiency website has helped millions of IT professionals globally who search for best practices and technologies to help them make their computer environment more efficient.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

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Meatless Mondays

Meatless Mondays... 42U's ongoing efforts to reduce our carbon footprint and promote sustainable solutions

Meatless Mondays
... 42U's ongoing efforts to reduce our carbon footprint and promote sustainable solutions