Category Archives: Good Fact

Fake Meat is so Much Better

The new alternatives to meat like the Beyond Burger are remarkably better for the environment than processed animals. This is found by a research team at the University of Michigan who looked into the carbon footprint of different processed hamburger patties (veggie and meat). They found that one Beyond Burger patty has a carbon footprint of 400g, whereas the same sized beef patty has a footprint of 3,700g. Reducing your carbon footprint by making tiny changes to your diet is getting easier every year.

Production of the dominant ingredients – pea protein, canola oil, coconut oil – represent important contributions to greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE), energy use and land use. Packaging also is an important contributor across all impact categories: the polypropylene tray is the largest contributor to packaging’s share of GHGE, energy use, and water use, whereas fiber production for cardboard and pallets make notable contributions to land use. We estimate that switching to a polypropylene tray made of 100% postconsumer recycled content could reduce the overall GHGE of the BB life cycle by 2% and reduce energy use by 10%.

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This Breathing Exercise is Better Than Normal Exercise

People suffering from low blood pressure may soon have an easier time exercising to keep their pressure at the proper level thanks to a handheld device. Researchers have found a technique that is more efficient than traditional exercise. Patients can keep their blood level at a safe level by practicing a breathing technique known as High-Resistance Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training (IMST). Basically the exercise helps strengthen the of the diaphragm by providing some resistance. Of course, there are still many benefits to just going for a walk.

Results show participants in the IMST group saw their systolic blood pressure fall by an average of nine points. That kind of improvement, researchers say, is generally better than what high blood pressure patients see from walking 30 minutes a day five days a week. The study finds the IMST results are even on par with certain blood pressure-lowering drugs prescribed to patients.

Perhaps more importantly, study authors find people doing IMST saw their blood pressure continue to stay low even after they stopped the breathing workouts for six weeks. “We found not only is it more time-efficient than traditional exercise programs, the benefits may be longer lasting,” says Craighead.

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This Company Makes Products Out of Thin Air by Capturing co2

desert and stars

A materials company in Berlin wants to build the world using carbon taken our of the air – making it the first carbon-negative materials manufacture. Made of Air has sunglasses on the market and provides cladding material for buildings all made from a tried and tested method of capturing air based carbon, they then apply their unique method to make the carbon durable enough in these other settings. For every tone of plastic-like material they create they store about two tonnes of co2.

Over the next year, the company is ramping up its production capacity by 100 times to sequester 2,000 tonnes of CO2e each year.

Made of Air is a non-toxic bioplastic made from biochar. This charcoal-like material is almost pure carbon and is made by burning biomass such as forestry offcuts and secondary agricultural materials without oxygen.

Biochar has been produced for centuries and is increasingly being used as a fertiliser as well as a way of sequestering carbon in the soil.

Made of Air mixes biochar with a binder made from sugar cane to create a material that can be melted and moulded like a regular thermoplastic.

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Attempting Harmless Fashion

beards

The concept of sustinable fashion is more of a goal than something that can be put into practice. One company, Asket, is taking a different spin on making the fashion world better by adding accountability through traceability with the spin off effect of sustainability. Asket educates consumers on the supply chain of their products so people can make informed choices about what they wear. Nobody wants to financially support the factories in China using Uighur slave labour or the factories wasting 100 billion items of clothing each year. There’s a lot of work to be done in the fashion industry so it’s good to see a company tackling issues head-on.

As always, the most fashionable choice is to reduce your consumption by wearing what you already own or buying vintage wear.

We believe it’s crucial that the customer knows and understands the journey of a garment and the massive amount of resources and work that is put into them, because that’s the only way for someone to appreciate them and make sure that we turn them from disposables into investments; and that we then, in turn, actually start taking care of them and minimize our consumption.

I guess the disclaimer would be that traceability in itself doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily more sustainable. It just means that we’re aware where it’s made and how, and then you can start working on lowering your impact based on that. But of course, if you’re working with traceability and disclosing that, I would say you are working more responsibly, otherwise you wouldn’t put that [information] out there. If you’ve got nothing to hide, then you can do that.

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Plant Based Diets Reduce Mortality, Increase Environmental Wellbeing

Phramacy

Obviously, a diet change to consume less meat is good for animal mortality but what you might not know is that a mass shift to plant based diet is good for everyone’s health. New research has identified that the pollution caused by meat production is responsible premature death of over 17,000 in the USA alone. Therefore, the more people who reduce their meat consumption the less harm will be done to people. Perhaps it’s time to cut subsidies to pollution intensive farms as we aim to reduce pollution and carbon output.

Yes, this is a global problem which requires systemic changes; however, you can do something about by simply switching your beef patties for any plant based ones.

The researchers estimated air quality deaths related to 95 different agricultural commodities in the United States, using data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Subsequently, they estimated the per-unit annual impact of 67 products from 11 food groups. Products ranged from beef to beans.

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