Petition for Reading to go veggie one day a week

Reading eat veggie © T3V

Sign the petition now.

Reading can do anything

food samples and sixth form students at Maiden Erlegh School March 2009 Maiden Erlegh sixth form 09 We love Reading and we think Reading is capable of anything. If Ghent in Belgium can do it, if Liverpool can do it, we can do it too, and better.

Do what? Go veggie one day a week. Yes, all 250,000 of the citizens of Reading.

Ghent was the first town in the world to go vegetarian at least once a week. Thursday is the regular meatless day, in which civil servants and elected councillors opt for vegetarian meals. Schoolchildren also follow suit with their own veggie day. It is hoped the move will cut Ghent's environmental footprint and help tackle obesity. Around 90,000 so-called "veggie street maps" have been printed to help people find the city's vegetarian eateries. The British city of Liverpool is also following Ghent's lead.

Why this is important

St Bartholemew's School Newbury, year 9 prize-winning eco-veggie poster 22May09 eat meat eat the world It will significantly reduce our part in global warming, cost us nothing, and could even make us healthier.

We spend our lives reading and watching stories about the end of the mankind at the hand of some baddies or natural disaster, and rejoice in the bravery and sacrifice of the heroes who, at the last minute, save us all.

We know those stories are fantasy but do we live in a unique time where the survival of our species, and that of many others, is truly in jeopardy. Man-made global warming is real and just like in the movies there is a clock ticking. It won't click down to zero and we'll all explode - end of the story - it will be like a slow torture scene as the victim's strength gradually departs till even our hero is unrecognizable in his death. The longer we wait to act the worse the pain will be. But unlike the movies, the victim, the evil megalomaniac and the hero are the same person - they are us.

Global warming is a war against ourselves, or more accurately, it is a war against our children and our grandchildren. Most of us reading this will be spared the worst of the changes but they will not. The freedoms and excesses we enjoy today are at the expense of the generations to come and the poor of today.

Some readily point the finger of blame at 4x4 drivers or frequent fliers but the biggest cause of global warming is an indulgence nearly everyone partakes in - and that is of eating meat.

The 1996 ground breaking UN report Livestock's Long Shadow was the first of many investigations into the enormous cost of meat eating on our planet. Meat production is responsible for more greenhouse gas emission than transport.

Fixing the problem

The answer to global warming is simple, to drastically reduce the amount of green house gases we produce and do it soon. The problem is how.

Some dream of technology fixes in just the same way we hope our hero discovers his latent magical power to defeat the Evil Lord, but outside of the world of fantasy to wait and believe in unproven technology is an extremely dangerous strategy.

Meat Free Monday: What its supporters say

Any likely technofix is sure to require massive infrastructure changes, be a partial solution for one energy sector and be very expense.

What can you do?

Any changes you make to your life in the hope of reduces your carbon footprint can be judged in a number of ways:

  • How quickly can you make the change?
  • How long before a positive impact on the environment is felt?
  • How much C02 equivalent will be saved?
  • How much money is it going to cost you?
  • How big the impact will be to your lifestyle?
  • How much needs to be done by government before you can make that change?

The big energy consumption activities in your life will be:

  • Energy used in the home
  • Transport
  • Flying
  • and Food

Typically, for a westerner, removing any one of these activities will reduce your C02 emissions by up to a 1/4. Except for not flying ever, to totally eliminate one of these activities is to stop existing so we are really looking at the most efficient method of minimizing the impact of all of them.

If you have the time you can use one of the many C02 foot print calculators to measure your lifestyle. First pump in the numbers for your life as it is today. Then do the whole process again, but changes one of your answers to reflect a change you could make. After a few iterations you would have a measurement of the relative merits of the choices you could make.

Here are some results you would find.

Choices

Reduce you household energy requirements by 50%

This would save you about 1.5 tons of emissions.

How: Maybe install £12,000 of photoelectric panels and £4,000 on solar hot water? Replace all your appliances with low energy ones and not use them a 1/3 of the time. Rebuild your house to modern environments standards?

I will leave it to you to imagine what you would do, and what other people of the town would also achieve.

Reduce your car usage by 50%

This would save you about 1.2 tons of emissions.

How: Maybe junk your car for a new hybrid (and ignore the CO2 generated making the new car) and drive a lot less. Maybe wait for the government to spend billions on new infrastructure so you don't need your car so much? Car share to work every day? Stay at home a lot more?

Stop flying

Never fly ever again. If the World's CO2 emission allowances were shared equally by inhabitants just 5.5 hours in the air would be 90% of your yearly CO2 allowance.

Go vegan

St Bartholemew's School prize winning eco-veggie poster from 9 June 2009 Yes, going vegan has approximately the same environmental impact as the above options and you can actually do it now and for free. Eating veggie or even just meat reducing gets you part way there. It also means more of the world's people can be fed.

McCartney urges 'meat-free days' to tackle climate change.

And we also can get the benefit of an improved diet for us and everyone who has at least one day a week eating veggie, leading to better health and therefore a lower cost to the NHS.

Reading going veggie once a week will not save the planet on its own, but it will strongly communicate that anyone can act upon climate change. It would have the potential of reducing Reading's CO2 emissions significantly. It can be done now, painlessly and may even been beneficial to our lives.

The petition

The petition was launched with much enthusiasm on World Environment Day at Forbury Fever and has already gained support from a number Reading councillors including Paul Gittings (LAB), Tom Stanway (CON) and Glenn Goodall (LIB).

You can sign the on-line petition here.

If you prefer a traditional paper-based petition, then you can download a PDF version of it here. Please pass it around to be signed by your friends, colleagues and customers. Completed forms should be sent to Thames Valley Veggies - phone us on 0118 9464858 for the address.

A very powerful message of your support can be made by directly contacting your Reading councillor.

Environmental footprint calculators

  • Calculate your environmental footprint at Earth Day Network.
  • Calculate your environmental footprint WWF ( you will need to delete the wwf cookies if you want to rerun the calculator.)
  • Calculate your carbon footprint at Micheal Blue Jay
  • Calculate your carbon footprint at Nature Conservatory.

There are many others. The exact number they produce may be differ but you will get an idea of what is important.

Meat and the environment news stories

The ActiVeg web site has links to many stories.

Meat and the environment posters

Thames Valley Veggies have produced a series of A4 posters that simply show the impact of animal farming on the environment and how changes in ones diet compare to other life style choices. They can be downloaded from here.

Sign the petition now.