By Jake Lee
Every morning, hundreds of students go to school, making their way through different classes, demanding extracurriculars, and relaxing in their free periods at the campus center. Thankfully, we have the luxury of being able to go to the cafeteria throughout the day, choosing from their plethora of wonderful snacks, drinks, and lunch options. But as we enter the lunch line and decide what to get, factoring in cost and taste, there is a hidden value that also should be taken into consideration-our ecological footprints.
When you purchase a meal in the cafeteria, the price reflects only one side of the story. The True Cost of food encompasses the different processes required to bring that item from farm to counter: millions of gallons of water, acres of cleared land, and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions.
“What’s so bad about foods with a heavy true cost?”, you may think. The answer is effectively seen in our atmosphere and our future. High-impact food production accelerates global greenhouse gas emissions, leading to global warming and permanent disruptions to ecosystems. As the agricultural industries heavily rely on nonrenewable resources—fossil fuels for machinery, phosphorus for synthetic fertilizers—an increase in industry results in an increase in carbon emissions. Additionally, once these resources are depleted, they are gone forever.
Practicing environmental sustainability at RHS is not an unrealistic possibility; it is a simple,community effort to preserve our planet’s resources for the future. Collective community hard work can result in massive changes such as a 10x carbon footprint reduction when choosing grain alternatives over red meat.
The environmental footprint of the options available to RHS students is different for each item. Take two favorites from our cafeteria: the hamburger and the penne rigate. Burgers are certainly tasty, but the damage they do is immense. Beef production requires mass amounts of land, resulting in wilderness habitat destruction, loss of biodiversity, and carbon released as methane, a greenhouse gas that is nearly thirty times more aggressive as a climate pollutant than carbon dioxide. So again, while they’re good, ask yourself, are they worth that much harm? On the other hand, penne rigate is a much more safe option. When we think of plant-based options, we should consider the cost to produce carbohydrates compared to the cost of producing livestock. It is a much more efficient use of our resources to grow carbohydrates, and as a result much more environmentally friendly. Looking at these items together, understand that these choices really do have power.
Our team is focused on creating impactful changes by launching an educational outreach across the high school. Look out for impact information posters in the cafeteria and hallways, which explain more about the carbon and resource footprints of food served on the RHS menu. Our goal is to turn data that has previously been distant into easy-to-process everyday statistics. Based on the posters and the data, we hope students will be less focused on what is offered, and what they are consuming, but, instead, more focused on selecting what is best for the planet, focusing on sustainability. We hope that together our school will be transformed to be more sustainable.