6 Sustainable Actions for 2024, Farro Veggie Bowl & Regenesis
How to lower your carbon footprint by 6 tons, healthy meal prep inspiration, and why soil health is human health (#49).
Welcome back to BRB w/ Nathan P, your 5-min weekly dose of information to inspire climate action.
Each Wednesday, you can expect💥1 Breakthrough, 🥘1 Recipe, and 📚1 Book on food & climate in your inbox.
Happy 2024! I wish you all joy, health, and optimism. 🌱
I am thrilled to have you in this community of 1,000+ climate founders, investors, and innovators. Please reach out anytime on how I can support your journey.
Growing this community is one of my priorities for this year – stay tuned for events, member resources, and more. I have a lot of projects brewing and you’ll be the first to know here.
I’m also exploring the mycelium-based foods & solid-state fermentation world – if you’re an industry expert or an early stage founder, please reach out!
New year, new journey, and also new BRB visual identity. You will be seeing more content from me across different platforms in new formats this year.
💥 6 Sustainable Actions for 2024
The average carbon footprint of a US resident is 16 tons per year. To stay below 2 degrees warming, we each need to emit less than 2.3 tons by 2030 (Oxfam).
People ask me all the time what individual actions they can take. If living a sustainable lifestyle is important to you in 2024, here are 6 actions to reduce your carbon footprint by 6 tons.
For each, I calculated the approximate carbon emissions your actions can save (full assumptions at the end of the newsletter).
Ready to get started? Let’s dive in.
Note: CO2e means carbon dioxide equivalents. Greenhouse gases (GHG) have different warming potentials. For example, methane has an 80X greater warming potential than CO2. CO2e standardizes emissions from different gases for comparison.
1. ✈️ Fly Less & Use Public Transit
Annual Impact: - 2.19 tons of CO2e / year
Economy flights and passenger cars result in similar emissions: around 0.22kg CO2e per kilometer (or 0.75 lb CO2e per mile), which can change based on vehicle and trip length.
That puts:
✈️ A roundtrip economy flight from New York to Europe at 1 ton CO2e
🚘 A daily 60km commute at 13.2kg CO2e / day
By comparison, public transit has 5X fewer emissions per person. This switch is meaningful, though difficult in areas without the right public transit systems.
We can’t eliminate all air travel. I love traveling and experiencing new countries myself. But there are many business meetings and conferences that could save both time and money to have remotely.
By reducing flights by 50% and switching 50% of driving to public transit, you can lower your footprint by more than 2 tons.
🥩 2. Reduce Meat Consumption
Annual Impact: - 1.17 tons CO2e / year
We vote for the future we want 3 times a day at every meal.
Food has a disproportional impact on human and planetary health. Change to an EV and you can reduce your emissions by 2%, but change what you eat and you can reduce them by 20%.
You’ve likely already heard that raising livestock has a high environmental impact on many fronts:
🌳 Deforestation
💧 Water pollution
🦬 Biodiversity loss
💨 Carbon emissions
Eating less meat is one of the most meaningful actions we can take both for our health and the planet’s. EAT-Lancet has great resources on the “planetary health diet.”
To reach the EAT-Lancet recommendations, we should reduce our meat consumption by at least 2/3 and in doing so prevent 1.17 tons CO2e / year.
Another question I get all the time is: what about fish?
Well, if you’ve seen Seaspiracy on Netflix, sustainable fish consumption is challenging due to overfishing, bycatch, and trawlers that scrape the marine floor. Sustainably-labeled seafood may unfortunately not be better either.
The most sustainable fish to consume are smaller fish that reproduce faster. The acronym is SMASH:
🐟 Sardines
🐟 Mackerel
🐟 Anchovies
🐟 Salmon
🐟 Herring
For context:
3. 🏡 Switch to Heat Pumps
Annual Impact: - 1.15 tons of CO2e / year
Heating furnaces and air conditioning consume the most electricity of any appliance at home. In fact, heating and cooling account for 46% of home energy use (Direct Energy).
In a study conducted by UC Davis, researchers found that switching from furnaces and AC to heat pumps reduces energy consumption and emissions by 45-72%.
Heat pumps may initially be expensive, but the pay-back time on energy savings is usually between 2 and 4 years.
4. 🥘 Reduce Food Waste
Annual Impact: - 0.60 tons of CO2e / year
Food waste alone accounts for around 8% of global GHG emissions. If it were a country, food waste would be the 3rd largest emitter behind China and the US.
About 18-24% of landfills is food waste (EPA), where it rots and emits high amounts of methane.
Of course, not all food waste is generated at home – some of it happens at farms, supermarkets, or elsewhere along the supply chain.
We should focus on reducing food waste first, then compost any food scraps.
5. 👕 Buy Better & Less
Annual Impact: - 0.51 tons of CO2e / year
I am consistently appalled by the statistics of fast fashion.
The average American purchases 64 clothing items and 7.5 pairs of shoes per year (American Apparel and Footwear Association).
Here’s how the emissions of different clothing items stack-up:
👕 T-shirt: 7kg CO2e (Carbonfact)
👟 Sneakers: 14kg CO2e (MIT News)
👖 Jeans 33kg CO2e (Springer)
Quality products are more expensive at first but cheaper in the long run. As Patagonia’s founder Yvon Chouinard says in his memoir, “things that are cheap signal that we view the planet cheaply” and “the more you know, the less you need.”
Let’s buy better & buy less to prevent the world from looking more like this:
6. 🧺 Skip the Dryer
Annual Impact: - 0.39 tons of CO2e / year
Dryers are an other sneaky energy-consuming appliance, often accounting for 6% of your energy bill.
Drying 2 loads of laundry per week also amounts to 864 lb or 393 kg CO2e per year (NYT). If you have the space, air drying is cheaper and carbon-free.
What did I miss? Let me know in the comments.
🥘 Recipe: Farro Veggie Bowl
If you’ve been thinking about preparing healthier meals for you & yours in 2024, this is your sign.
Yesterday I made this farro bowl with crispy Brussel sprouts, grilled tempeh, sliced avocado, shredded carrots, and pickled red onions.
Prepared in 20 minutes and packed with 50g+ of protein, it’s an easy meal prep recipe for the week ahead. Whether you make 1 or 10 portions is up to you.
PS: if you make it, please send pictures!
📚 Book: Regenesis
This book is among the most highly recommended from subscribers.
Soil may be the most advanced technology on this planet, and George Monbiot reaffirmed that belief.
In Regenesis, George Monbiot dives into the wonders of soil microbiology and why human health is tied to soil health.
There is disproportionately more biodiversity below soil than above it. Earlier this year, a study concluded that 59% of the world’s biodiversity is found in soils (Nature).
And yet, industrial agriculture ignores the fungi, bacteria, and earthworms plants rely on to grow. Intensive farming is killing soil microbiology and without the right interventions, 90% of the world’s soils may no longer be farmable by 2050 (FAO).
🎣 Fishing and 🌾 farming are two of the main drivers of biodiversity loss, and the latter is also a leading source of water and air pollution.
Regenesis is an enlightening read rich with many fun facts. For instance:
Ants bring clay from the subsoil and mix it with their saliva, making a cement strong enough to support their galleried and storied domes, the equivalent, if scaled to human inhabitants, of 100-meter towers.
I appreciate his candidness and exploration of a wide range of health and climate solutions – from microbiomes to precision fermentation and soil biocatalysts.
While I’m enthusiastic about “ferming” and soil-free alternative proteins, I don’t think we will – or should try to – totally eliminate soil from food production.
Highly recommend to rethink our food systems in 2024. What do you think?
My favorite quotes as teasers:
“The soil beneath a square meter of the orchard may contain many hundreds of thousands of animals, ranging across thousands of species.”
“Leonardo da Vinci remarked that we know more about the movement of the celestial bodies than about the soil on our own planet. This remains true today.”
“The promise of farmfree food is much greater than this: we could rewild most of the land now used for farming, while protecting the remaining wild places… This transition could be our best hope of stopping the sixth great extinction.”
Thank you for reading – BRB next week ✌️
💥 6 Sustainable Actions for 2024 (assumptions)
1. ✈️ Fly Less & Use Public Transit
Commercial flights and passenger cars each emit around 0.22kg CO2e / km (or 0.75 lb / mi at 25 mpg).
Emissions from distances traveled by the average American (DOT):
🚘 21,683 km x 0.22kg CO2e / km = 4,770 kg CO2e
✈️ 1,678 km x 0.22kg CO2e / km = 369 kg CO2e
Public transit has 5X fewer emissions than passenger vehicles per person.
Assuming that 50% of miles driven are replaced by public transit and 50% of miles flown are eliminated,
Annual Impact: 4.770 x 0.4 + 0.369 x 0.5 = 2.19 tons CO2e / year.
2. 🥩 Reduce Meat Consumption
Emissions from meat per capita based on annual consumption per year (USDA):
🐔 45 kg chicken x 8 kg CO2e / kg = 360 kg CO2e
🥩 26 kg beef x 35 kg CO2e / kg = 910 kg CO2e
🥓 24 kg pork x 17 kg CO2e / kg = 408 kg CO2e
🍤 2.7 kg shrimp x 12 kg CO2e / kg = 32.4 kg CO2e
🐟 6 kg other seafood x 8 kg CO2e / kg = 48 kg CO2e
To reach the EAT-Lancet recommendations, we should reduce our meat consumption by at least 2/3 for human and planetary health.
Annual Impact: (0.36+0.91+0.408+0.032+0.048) x 2/3 = 1.17 tons CO2e / year.
3. 🏡 Switch to Heat Pumps
Average emissions from a home in the US: 6,373 kg (14,020 lbs, EPA).
Average household size in the US: 2.51 (US Census)
UC Davis study shows heat pumps reduce energy use by at least 45%.
Annual Impact: 6.373 / 2.51 x 0.45 = 1.15 tons CO2e / year.
4. 🥘 Reduce Food Waste
In the US, around 80 million tons of food is wasted every year, or about 240kg / year with a population of 330 million.
As food rots in landfills, it emits about 2.5 kg CO2e per 1 kg of food.
Annual Impact: 0.24 x 2.5 = 0.60 tons CO2e / year.
5. 👕 Buy Better & Less
The average American purchases 64 clothing items and 7.5 pairs of shoes per year.
Assuming an average of 14 kg CO2e for both shoes and clothing items.
Buying 50% as much per year with fewer and higher quality products,
Annual Impact: (64+7.5) x 14 kg CO2e x 0.5 = 0.51 tons CO2e / year.
6. 🧺 Avoid The Dryer
2 dryer cycles / week amounts to 864 lb CO2e or 393kg CO2e / year (NYT).
Annual Impact: 0.39 tons CO2e / year.
About Me
Hi there! My name is Nathan Paumier – I’m a climate optimist, food enthusiast, and avid reader.
My mission is to make it fun, easy, and delicious to make more sustainable decisions.
I started this newsletter after frequent questions on food tech, reading recommendations, and my secret recipes.
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