4 Major Environmental Benefits of a Vegan Diet
 

World Environment Day? First established by the United Nations in 1973, this global holiday aims to raise awareness about the planetary challenges we face in our fight against the climate crisis. Wondering how you can do your part? Read about how you can fight waste with recycling and composting, learn how to welcome bees into your garden, and enjoy easy, low-waste recipes. Plus, read about the vegan brands working to keep plastic bags out of landfills, how mushrooms can help reduce deforestation, and the environmental benefits of a plant-based diet. Eat vegan and live sustainably today and every day.

20 VEGAN BRANDS JOIN COALITION TO KEEP THE EQUIVALENT OF 27 MILLION PLASTIC BAGS OUT OF LANDFILLS

Twenty plant-based brands are taking action to reduce plastic waste in their supply chain while creating a positive socio-economic impact for marginalized waste workers.  

Twenty plant-based food brands from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom are coming together to tackle plastic pollution. In partnership with plastic action platform rePurpose Global, brands such as Outstanding Foods, Myvegan, The Very Good Butchers, and V-Dog are working to remove plastic waste equalling over 27 million plastic bags, or three million plastic bottles, in weight from the planet.

Focusing on the value chain, rePurpose helps people and companies calculate, reduce, and offset their plastic footprint and advance a circular economy. To make their own impact, the 20 plant-based brands that signed on to rePurpose are reducing the plastic in their packaging and supply chains and financing the recovery of nature-bound plastic waste through rePurpose’s social enterprise waste projects, creating additional income streams for more than 10,000 waste workers and community members across three continents. 

According to rePurpose, of the 5.8 billion metric tons of plastic waste generated globally over the past 70 years, only about nine percent has been recycled, leaving the rest to be incinerated, sent to landfill, or littered in the environment. 

“Time is running out,” Peter Wang Hjemdahl, Chief Advocacy Officer and Co-Founder of rePurpose Global, said in a statement. “We are living in a plastic epidemic, where there is no single solution. Now more than ever, there is a critical need for like-minded brands to come together and use their collective strength to help tackle plastic pollution head-on.” 

Improving vegan sustainability efforts

Although vegan and plant-based products are already reducing carbon footprints and helping mitigate climate change compared to their animal-based counterparts, their climate action can be stunted by the use of plastic packaging that is frequently non-recyclable and ends up in landfills or oceans. According to Our World in Data, plastic packaging is the leading contributor to plastic waste, generating an estimated 141 metric million tons of plastic waste each year. 

“By using only plant-based ingredients in our products, we’re having a positive impact on the environment by reducing greenhouse gasses associated with meat and dairy products,” Bill Glaser, CEO and Co-Founder of Outstanding Foods, told VegNews. “We also want to be a steward for the environment with our packaging and have partnered with rePurpose Global to be certified plastic neutral. That means that we’re helping to take plastic out of the oceans and removing other plastic waste before it goes into the oceans. Outstanding Foods is committed to making a positive environmental impact in all we do and our partnership with rePurpose is a big part of it.”

rePurpose also offers a Plastic Negative certification, which is awarded to brands with ambitious plastic reduction commitments in their supply chains, enabling the elimination of at least twice as much plastic waste from nature as they create through their own plastic footprint. To produce products as a plastic negative business, companies help fund the recovery of low-value plastic waste through rePurpose’s Anant Pranay impact project in Aurangabad, India, while also supporting the waste workers working at the project, providing a living wage to fight plastic pollution.

“Many of our members are mission-driven and want to use their businesses to have a positive impact on our planet,”  Sabina Vyas, Senior Director of Impact Strategies at Plant Based Foods Association (PBFA), said in a statement. “They are already doing an incredible job to help consumers lighten their footprint by making delicious plant-based foods and sustainable packaging solutions are at the forefront for our membership.”

Repackaging to reduce plastic waste

Other brands have also taken initiative in reducing their plastic packaging. Last year, food and beverage brand Chobani repackaged its vegan oat milk-based yogurts in paper cups to make the product even more sustainable. The new cups, made from 80 percent paperboard, replace most of the plastic on its oat yogurt packaging, with the exception of a thin plastic lining that preserves the integrity of the yogurt. Chobani already packs its oat milk carton, cold brew coffee, and creamers in paperboard and is continuing its journey toward reducing plastic by repacking its oat yogurts in more sustainable cups. 

“We all have a role to play in protecting our planet,” Chobani Founder and CEO Hamdi Ulukaya said in a statement. “People have been asking for a paper cup, and we welcome this challenge to start reducing our plastic use, and to spark a conversation about how we can drive change together.”

Additionally, plant-based beauty brand Alpine Provisions has switched over all of its products to plastic-free packaging in an effort to support the plastic-free movement and inspire the body care industry to do the same. The company created aluminum body care bottles, paper deodorant tubes, paper lip balm tubes, and paper bar soap wraps because aluminum can be recycled an infinite number of times. According to the company, 84 percent of all the aluminum ever made is still in use today. And because the material is so lightweight, shipping aluminum saves millions of pounds of carbon emissions each year. 

Going plastic-free in fashion

A similar plastic-free movement is taking shape in the fashion industry. Last year, VH Corp.—the parent company of fashion brands Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger—joined the plastic-free vegan leather movement by partnering with biotechnology company Ecovative. The partnership gives PVH priority access to Ecovative’s sustainable vegan leather made from fast-growing mycelium (mushroom root systems). PVH is also working directly with Ecovative to co-develop custom mycelium materials to bring a range of products to retail, from soft vegan leather accessories and garments to thick, durable belts and shoes.

Similarly, biotechnology startup Bolt Threads created the Mylo Consortium in 2020. This partnership includes major fashion brands Stella McCartney, Adidas, Lululemon, and Kering—which owns the luxury brands Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta, Gucci, Alexander McQueen and Yves Saint Laurent. Under the Mylo Consortium, these brands have exclusive rights to “mylo,” Bolt Threads’ mycelium-based vegan leather. McCartney already previewed the Frayme Mylo bag made with the innovative material during Paris Fashion week last year and will be releasing it to consumers through her ready-to-wear Spring 2023 collection. 

Mycelium-based vegan leather helps solve the sustainability challenges in the fashion industry by reducing the reliance on both animal-based leather and plastic vegan leathers like polyurethane. It also makes materials production vastly more efficient. While it takes months or years to raise animals for their skins, this process takes a matter of days and yields a ready-to-finish material free from plastic and petroleum.

For more on sustainable vegan brands, read:
Why South Carolina is the New Hub of Sustainable Vegan Mushroom Leather
Vegan Fish to Be Recognizes as “Sustainable Seafood”

Regards Mark

20 Vegan Brands Join Coalition to Keep the Equivalent of 27 Million Plastic Bags Out of Landfills | VegNews

A US Judge has ruled that bees can legally be classified as fish, in a bizarre move to protect endangered bees.

‘Bees are fish!’ Judge issues bizarre animal rights ruling amid row ‘great day for bees’ | Science | News | Express.co.uk

According to the decision made by a California appeals court, bees in the US can now be legally called a fish. While odd, this move will now allow the government in California to protect endangered bee species, many of which are under threat from climate change. The ruling came on Tuesday after agricultural groups sued California wildlife officials for attempting to list four bumble bee species under the California Endangered Species Act (CESA).

The judge reversed a previous ruling by a lower court, which then noted that threatened or endangered species of bees could be listed under the CESA category of fish as the definition of “fish” is broad and includes invertebrates.

Pamela Flick from Defenders of Wildlife, one of the case’s intervenor defendants said: “It is a great day for California’s bumble bees.

“Today’s decision confirms that California Endangered Species Act protections apply to all of our state’s imperilled native species and is critical to protecting our state’s renowned biodiversity.

“Bees and other pollinators are integral to healthy ecosystems and the crucial pollination services they provide serve all of us, making this decision exponentially more consequential.”

According to Xerces Society, a conservation group, this decision will pave the way for critical protections that are needed for four endangered bumble bee species that occur in California.

It will also allow the Commission to protect other imperilled insects under CESA, which provides protection for some of the most vulnerable plants and animal species in the region, providing a pathway for these species to boost their populations to ensure they don’t go extinct.

CESA rules define an “endangered species” to include a bird, mammal, fish, amphibian, reptile, or plant.

The issue arose when activists pointed out that this definition could leave out a number of other threatened species, such as insects.

Regards Mark

For dolphins, friendship is a matter of taste.

Dolphins get to know their friends by tasting their pee, a new study finds. By sampling sips of each other’s urine, dolphins demonstrated a type of social recognition that begins with an exchange of whistles that are unique to specific individuals — much like human names. 

Scientists have long known that dolphins identify themselves using so-called signature whistles that are different for each dolphin and that they address one another by imitating such whistles. But researchers were uncertain if this copying showed that dolphins associate signature whistles with individual identity or with a more general concept such as “friend.” 

Recently, scientists learned that not only do bottlenose dolphins demonstrate name recognition, they also replicate this recognition with another sense: taste. 

By tasting each other’s urine and recognizing the source, the dolphins showed that they could keep track of dolphin identities using two types of sensory input. This means the animals could create and store a mental concept of other dolphins, according to the new study.

Flavorful friends

Researchers discovered that dolphins do this kind of identification via pee-tasting while investigating if the animals are truly calling each other by name when they copy whistles. The scientists conducted what is known as a cross-modal study, in which experiments test if an animal can recognize an object or another animal across multiple cues received from different senses. 

Scientists have previously used such experiments in a wide array of animals, including fish and monkeys. But communication systems in most animals lack sounds that are recognizable as labels for individuals, such as dolphins’ signature whistles, the researchers wrote.

However, finding a second sense in dolphins that was testable under laboratory conditions was challenging. Testing dolphin sight or echolocation would “involve moving giant monitors or even the dolphins themselves around, which is impossible,” said lead study author Jason Bruck, a biologist at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas. But dolphins are known to swim through other dolphins’ urine plumes, mouths agape, and they may do so to get social information “the way a dog sniffs a hydrant,” Bruck told Live Science. 

“Except dolphins would have to do that with taste, not with smell,” as the cetaceans lack olfactory bulbs, he added.

A question of identity

Researchers found that dolphins spent roughly three times as long sampling urine from unfamiliar dolphins as they did from familiar ones. This suggested that the animals could identify known fellows by taste.

To test for persistence of identification across senses, researchers paired recordings of signature whistles with urine from dolphins: in some of the pairings, the urine came from the whistler, while in others it was produced by a different dolphin. The scientists then introduced dolphins to the sound of a whistle and the taste of a urine sample.

Related: This whale-dolphin hybrid is not a ‘wholphin.’ Here’s why.

When the pee matched the whistle, listening dolphins lingered closer to playback speakers. This indicated that the animals recognized the consistency in signals perceived by two senses — taste and hearing — and that both taste and sound came from the same dolphin.

These findings mean that for dolphins, whistles represent the specific dolphin’s identity in other dolphins’ minds, including the taste of that dolphins’ pee.

“We now know that when a dolphin produces that signature whistle, they really are referring to that dolphin they’re copying,” Bruck said. “They are using those whistles in much the same way that we use names.”

Lipid mechanisms?

Future studies could investigate the mechanisms behind this newly discovered dolphin ability, Bruck said. Dolphins’ taste-driven identification may be driven by lipid recognition; if so, dolphin research may reveal a lipid-sensitive taste bud that’s bigger and more robust than the human variety and therefore easier to study. Such a discovery could inform research into obesity in humans, Bruck said.

More fundamentally, these findings could open new avenues of dolphin research, Bruck added. “Transmitting social information from dolphin to dolphin [is] as easy as [using] an underwater speaker” and could offer insights into “how dolphins perceive each other as individuals,” he said.

The findings were published May 18 in the journal Science Advances.

Original article on Live Science.

Regards Mark