Highlight Sustainable Dining outlines the means to a more sustainable future for Earth Day Special

What a surprise! It turns out that what you put on your plate does matter to everyone’s life. Something small, such as the food we choose to eat, can make a big difference in something as enormous as climate change.

April 20 marks the first day of the virtual interactive celebration of Earth Day, which was led by the Department of Education. On this special day, Melody Melo-Rijk, the project manager of The Sustainable Diner from the World Wide Fund for Nature-Philippines, discusses the proper preparation and disposal of food in response to current environmental issues.

Seeing the Links

We only have one home, and that is Earth. Without it, we have no place to live, so it’s understandable why many people feel powerless amid a climate emergency. To see the degrading state of the planet is overwhelming, leading one to believe that there is nothing to do. But in reality, your personal decisions about what you eat daily may alter the course of our history. Melody also shares the first step you can take: seeing the connection between our food choices and the environment.

Food is one of the basic necessities of humans. It is also one of the products that demand many resources such as land, water, and pesticides, to produce food. Following the production, the food will be transported from the farm to the market. The further the distance, the more fuel consumption it will take for the food to be delivered. It leads to the generation of more greenhouse gas emissions.

Did you know that the type of food we eat may be categorized according to the amount of greenhouse gases they emit from production to our plates? Red meat products are ranked at the top, releasing 36 kilograms of CO2 equivalent per kilogram. This is still nearly four times the mean footprint of chicken. Or 10 to 100 times the footprint of most plant-based foods. Since the production of certain types of food relies on the demand from the market, citizens can make an environmental impact by choosing what food to buy.

That’s not the end of it. We must also take into account the manner we consume our food. Since the beginning of the quarantine, many people have opted for food deliveries, becoming more and more