Green is the new black

Washington is going green. From Michelle Obama’s White House vegetable patch to the organic “people’s garden” that will soon span the lawn of the Department of Agriculture, our nation’s capitol has jumped aboard the sustainability bandwagon and affirmed the onset of what is now being hailed as a “Sustainable Food Movement.”

And we know all about that. With our pioneering School of Sustainability (appropriately bedecked with solar panels and cyclist showers), our innovative “eco-fresh” café and our burgeoning Campus Harvest Program, we practically invented “sustainability” or were, at least, one of its earliest champions. We have recycling programs, solar-powered trash compactors, water-conserving toilets (at least in the Coor building) and fair-trade coffee. We may live in a desert, but we’re as green as you can get.

…Right?

Perhaps that depends on what we mean by “green.” If the surge in canvas tote bag sales tells us anything, it’s that our drive to preserve the Earth is one with our drive to consume…a lot. Somewhere between the premiere of “An Inconvenient Truth” and the roll-out of Wal-Mart’s “fair trade” coffee brand, this noble idea of “sustainability” seems to have devolved into a super-charged marketing and branding exercise.

It begs the question: As sandaled and fixed-geared as we are in this solar-powered, organic Garden of Eden, can we be guilty of it too?

Engrained: Fair Food or Fad?

To find out, I thought I’d go straight to the shining star of our sustainable little universe, our very own glittering contribution to the Sustainable Food Movement – The Engrained café, brainchild of the multinational ARAMARK, which brings us nearly all of the food on our campus.

On the surface, Engrained seems like a green (albeit uppity) paradise. Not only does it boast Earth-toned walls peppered with facts about the environment and a “starlight terrace” where you can eat your organic basil and ricotta frittata under shade panels woven from natural fibers, it also professes to abide by six principles of sustainability: locally-sourced food, responsible procurement, energy and waste conservation, green buildings, waste stream management and responsible transportation.

Sufficiently heartened by what appears to be a legit, eco-friendly operation, I arranged to speak with ARAMARK’s sustainability manager, Katrina Shum, and the company’s “Farm-to-School Facilitator,” Kristen Rasmussen, to learn more about what makes this café so darn sustainable.

“Sustainability” is engineered, marketed and monitered by a multinational corporation

My good-natured optimism waned a bit, however, when I was informed that my interview questions would have to be screened by ARAMARK’s marketing department and all responses approved by their corporate headquarters. Nevertheless, I complied. And was rewarded by a transcript containing no more information than (and at times, quotes directly from) ARAMARK’s Web site and marketing materials…. An apropos reminder that “sustainability” is engineered, marketed and monitored by a multinational corporation.

Nevertheless, I’m impressed by the café’s apparent commitment to locally sourced food. One of Rasmussen’s chief responsibilities, in fact, is to facilitate the café’s produce purchases from small farms within a 150-mile radius — a laudable practice that supports small farmers, boosts our local economy and minimizes food transportation costs and emissions. Sustainable food activists across the country have long advocated that such institutional support of local food networks and famer’s markets are pivotal to the success of the sustainable food movement.

Unfortunately, the café seems to be more lax about its meats. While it does source seafood from suppliers that meet Monterey Bay Sustainable Seafood WATCH’s fishing/aquaculture guidelines, the specs on its other meats are less clearly and certainly stated. According to Rasmussen, the café uses free-range, antibiotic-free poultry and beef “as often as possible when available,” but doesn’t offer any information on how possible or available these actually are.

I’m a little surprised by this, considering how meat-intensive the menu appears to be, as well as everything I’ve heard lately about the environmental consequences of unsustainable meat production. In the interests of sustainability, why not less meat and more veggie options?

“We try to have something to please everyone,” Rasmussen says.” We are demonstrating that one can reduce the footprint that they make while still enjoying the foods that they like.”

But with famous chefs, media bigwigs and even the United Nations reminding us that “the livestock sector [is] one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems at every scale from local to global,” according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, can a casual commitment to organic/ethically-bred meats really make a significant difference in reducing the carbon footprint?

A Meatless Movement

While “free-range” is still the “it” word for hip, responsible consumers, the sustainability bandwagon is radicalizing — and the new litmus test for environmentally sustainable consumers requires a much greater lifestyle change than just shelling out a few extra bucks for antibiotic-free beef. The liberal Intelligentsia, spanning progressive media nationwide, is very vocally advocating less meat now (or no meat at all) as the most efficient and noblest solution to climate change and environmental insecurity.

Replace one meat-based meal per day with a PB&J sandwich and effectively lower your carbon footprint by 2.5 tons

Political blogging wunderkind Ezra Klein is a vocal proponent of the PB&J Campaign, which asks people to replace one meat-based meal per day with a PB&J sandwich and effectively lower their carbon footprint by 2.5 tons (40 percent of what you’d save driving a hybrid instead of a sedan). Famed New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is on an anti-factory-farming crusade, using his weekly column to advocate for animal rights. White House staffer Kal Penn (formerly of “Harold & Kumar Go to Whitecastle”) and Twitter founder, Biz Stone, are both vocal vegans. Even the United Nations is beseeching us to eat less meat.

ASU students are similarly promoting this new meatless movement, launching vegetarian and vegan awareness clubs across our campuses. Caitlin Joseph, the president of Vegaware, says she advocates vegetarian diets because meat consumption exacerbates “issues of land use, water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions…The amount of meat an average American eats in one year depletes 3 ½ football fields worth of land each year.”

The effect of meat production on the environment is attributable to a variety of factors, the most of obvious of which is the startling amount of resources that must be invested into a single hamburger. To be precise, it takes 16 pounds of grain and 2,500 gallons of water to produce just one pound of beef, meaning that one-third of the world’s cereal harvest and 90 percent of the soy harvest is raised exclusively for animal feed.

“This agricultural operation is far from sustainable,” says Tyler McAneny, a new member of the fledgling vegan and animal rights group Students Taking Action for Animal Rights (STAAR). “Giant agribusiness exists solely for profit,” adds the 19-year-old philosophy major. “It’s bolstered by government subsidies that keep the price of meat artificially low.”

The direct government subsidies that enable agribusiness to keep turning a profit have long proven contentious. Not only do they pump money into corporations at the expense of small farmers and often the environment, but the extent of these subsidies is shocking.

In 1993 in Arizona, for instance, the Central Arizona Project began diverting water from the Colorado river for farm irrigation in Arizona. While the cost of this water was $209 per acre-foot, Arizona farmers only paid $2 per acre-foot — the remaining $207 was covered with taxpayer money. This expense seems particularly egregious in light of the USDA’s own statements that irrigation of that nature results in a minimal increase in profits. But if we are going to continue growing meats, such investment is inevitable.

Given the amount of resources invested in the meat industry, many vegetarians and food activists regard meat production and consumption as more than just an environmental concern – for them it has also become a social justice issue.

“You can feed a lot more vegetarians than meat eaters on the same amount of land and still provide good protein sources,” says Joseph. “There are many political and social issues behind the distribution of food…it makes sense that eating lower on the food chain would provide more food to go around.”

Take into account the fact that Americans are eating twice the amount of meat as the entire rest of the world (and with that, all of the grain and water that’s invested into it), and meat consumption further becomes an equality issue…and one.

Green Trend or Grass Roots?

While ventures like Engrained are a step in the right direction, encouraging more responsible consumer habits, activists like McAneny worry that those steps aren’t big enough to make a real difference.

“I don’t think it’s as far in the direction it needs to go,” he says. “It depends on what your ultimate goal is.”

It’s a fair suggestion. Contrary to Rasmussen’s suggestion, “pleasing everyone” might not be solution to a global environmental crisis. Many organizations are calling for more radical action to a pressing issue. Meatless Monday, an organization that invites people to cut their meat consumption just on Mondays, has been imploring President Obama to institute Meatless Mondays at the White House (Incidentally, presidents Wilson, Truman and Roosevelt all instituted national meatless days in order to alleviate global food shortages). The Sustainable Table has developed a series of short animated films titled “The Meatrix,” which exposes the reality behind meat production.

Closer to home, STAAR has been busy organizing demonstrations on campus and workshops at local conferences and teach-ins, educating students and community members about both the environmental consequences of meat production, as well as its ethical dimensions. VegAware is committed to consciousness-raising efforts and providing support for people who are interested in becoming (or testing out) a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle.

They may not have a starlight terrace with shade panels woven from natural fibers, but when these two groups conduct their workshops or host their vegetarian dinners, some things are certain: their strategies for promoting environmental sustainability don’t involve making profit, or making compromises.

For more information about VegAware, contact Caitlin.Joseph@asu.edu.
For more information about STAAR, contact Yin Macatabas at ASU.STAAR@gmail.com.

Tagged as: green, meatless monday, On the Cover