Meat & The Environment
In 2015, MorningStar Farms® worked with Quantis, leaders in life cycle assessment consulting, to conduct a study comparing the environmental impact of veggie meals, meat-containing meals, and some of our own products across water use, greenhouse gas emission and land use. With that data we created the Veg Effect Calculator™ so that everyone can see the good their veggie meal can create.
*The actual environmental impacts will vary depending on various factors, including the source of the food and other overall dietary choices. Click here for lifecycle assessment and see below for comparison facts.
Thousands are represented in K, millions are represented in M, billions are represented in B and trillions are represented in T.
Choosing veggie meals over meals with meat can result in some big time resource savings. To make those savings more relatable, we’ve equated them to things you might recognize, like a parking space, or Niagara Falls or the moon. To find out how we define these comparisons, see the links below.
We based our Life Cycle Assessment on data from adults 18+ only, so all of our impact data reflects only the adults of a given population. Here’s how we got to those adult population numbers.
We used the 2014 estimated population figure from the Census Bureau and subtracted their 23.1% under 18 estimated population.
http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/00
We averaged the 18+ populations from each US state provided by the Census.
We averaged the populations of every US city with over 50,000 residents and then subtracted the nationwide under 18 ratio of 23.1%.
The EPA defines an average American shower as 8 minutes long using 18 gallons of water.
The U.S. Geological Survey claims most newer washing machines require around 25 gallons of water per load.
http://water.usgs.gov/edu/qa-home-percapita.html
The Blue Planet Network cites US water consumption at 176 gallons a day.
http://www.mltmua.com/conservation/your-respect.pdf
SwimEx estimates traditional single lane lap pool volume at 8,900 to 10,000 gallons, or 9,450 gallons.
http://www.swimex.com/lap-swimming-pools-vs-swimex-swim-in-place-pools/
Capitol.gov lists the volume of the Rotunda at 1.3 million cubic feet, or 9.7 million gallons.
https://www.aoc.gov/facts/capitol-hill
The American side of Niagara Falls dumps 150,000 gallons a second, or 540 million gallons an hour.
http://www.niagarafallslive.com/Facts_about_Niagara_Falls.htm
The US Golf Association states that their sponsored courses (16,797 in all) use more than 2.08 trillion gallons of water, collectively, per day.
https://www.usga.org/content/dam/usga/pdf/Water%20Resource%20Center/how-much-water-does-golf-use.pdf
The American Water Works Association estimates the monthly US water consumption at 3.9 trillion gallons, which comes to roughly 130 billion gallons a day.
http://www.awwa.org/publications/journal-awwa/abstract/articleid/15467.aspx
Via a chart describing the mean orbital distance of the International Space Station over the last year, we found that the average ISS orbit distance to be 249 miles above the ground.
http://www.heavens-above.com/IssHeight.aspx
The Texas Almanac measures the longest straight line from east to west across at Texas at 773 miles.
http://texasalmanac.com/topics/environment/environment
Google Maps measures the distance from Los Angeles to NYC. as 2777 miles.
See on Google Maps
The distance traveled in a trip "to the moon and back" is equal to twice the distance of the moon from the earth (238,800 miles), plus one half the circumference of the moon (6,784 miles) - 484,384 miles. This is because a space craft would generally rely on the gravity of the moon to sling shot it back to Earth.
http://io9.gizmodo.com/5984252/and-now-for-a-sense-of-scale-a-map-of-the-us-overlaid-on-the-moon
Universe Today makes mention of the longest and smallest distances from the Earth to Mars. We're using the closest expected approach with Mars in 2016, at 46.8 million miles.
http://www.universetoday.com/14824/distance-from-earth-to-mars/
Space.com defines the furthest and nearest distances between Saturn and Earth. We averaged the two to arrive at 873,000,000 miles.
http://www.space.com/18477-how-far-away-is-saturn.html
The US Dept. of Transportation estimates 60.5 trillion miles are travelled each week by all US drivers combined.
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/travel_monitoring/15dectvt/15dectvt.pdf
The Dept. of Tranportation lists standard parking space dimensions as 20 ft by 8 ft, or 160 square feet.
http://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/HTM/2003r1/part3/fig3b-18_longdesc.htm
The area of a regulation tennis court is 78 ft by 36 ft, or 2,808 square feet, including doubles lanes.
http://www.courtdimensions.net/tennis-court/index.php
Central Park’s website states the Parks land mass is measured to be 843 acres or 36,721,080 square feet.
http://centralpark.org/faq/
The National Park Conservancy Association lists the National Mall and Memorial Parks at "over 43,560,000 square feet."
https://www.npca.org/parks/national-mall-and-memorial-parks
New World states that Manhattan's land mass is measured to be 640,088,000 square feet.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Manhattan
Rhode Island's .gov website lists the "area" of the entire state, including waterways, at 33,844,000,000 square feet.
http://sos.ri.gov/divisions/Civics-And-Education/RI-History/ri-facts-figures
