Phoning it in

I was reading yet ANOTHER one of the cookbooks that I got from the library last night. This one has a whole section on meat and poultry, so I'm guessing it wasn't really a vegetarian cookbook. I actually really like it though because it has lots of those fun facts I love. It's called The Earthbound Cook and it's by Myra Goodman. I'm just now realizing that it's Earthbound, as in Earthbound farm organic produce that I buy all the time at the grocery store. It's a great book because it focuses on eating whole foods and trying to eat better not only for you, but also for the planet. So instead of actually writing something myself for this blog post, I thought I'd just list a few facts I found in this book. Hence, the blog post title. SO...here goes:

• A half-pound of conventionally produced ground beef is responsible for 50-60 times the greenhouse gas emissions of a half pound of fruits and veggies.
• Raising animals for food consumes more than half of all the water used in the US.
• There is no USDA organic certification for any type of seafood.
  
• Compost! 25% of a typical American household's garbage is comprised of discarded food and trimmings, generating roughly 96 billion lbs of food waste each year. And food wast4e in our landfills, combined with other materials that decompose, such as yard clippings, is the second largest man-made source of methane in the US, accounting for 34% of total methane emissions.
• According to the EPA, in the US we recycle only about 30% of eligible materials. Because recycling saves both material and energy, if we increase our national rate to just 60% we could save the equivalent of 315 million barrels of oil per year.