Plant-Rich Diets
Animal agriculture is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. Favoring plant-based foods reduces demand, thereby reducing land clearing, fertilizer use, and greenhouse gas emissions.
Introduction
Plant-rich diets hold enormous potential for climate change mitigation if adopted on a global scale. They also tend to be healthier than animal-rich diets. A plant-rich diet can be adopted incrementally with small behavioral changes that together lead to globally significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
Project Drawdown’s Plant-Rich Diets solution involves the individual choice to 1) maintain a 2,300-calorie-per-day nutritional regime; 2) meet daily protein requirements while decreasing meat consumption in favor of plant-based food items; and 3) purchase locally produced food when available. This solution replaces projected dietary trends.
In terms of cost, the solution appears to yield significant savings at the individual level, and indirectly at the national level through lower health-care costs. Moreover, the burden of change seems highly equitable and implementable, because developing nations already consume fewer calories and do not need to shift their diets much, whereas developed nations need to address issues such as obesity.
Bringing about dietary change is not simple because eating is personal and cultural, but promising strategies abound. Plant-based options must be available, visible, and enticing. Also critical: ending price-distorting government subsidies so the prices of animal protein more accurately reflect their true cost.
Project ideas to get started
Awareness campaign highlighting the benefits of living on a plant-based diet
Create sustainable packaging for an alternative meat company
Brand a plant-based fast food company
Create a brand for a vegan food company that includes its sustainable mission throughout the system
Marketing material for a Netflix cooking series only using plant-rich diets & vegan foods
Signage for existing grocery stores promoting vegan foods
Infographics explaining the advantage of calories per cost per carbon footprint
Children's campaign/PSA campaign promoting PRD to grade school kids
