#1: Eat less meat.

I like meat. A sandwich just doesn't seem like a sandwich without meat in it. I'm the last person that wants to become a vegetarian. People have been eating meat for hundreds of thousands of years. Our teeth are set up the same as many omnivorous animals. Humans were MEANT to eat meat... but that doesn't mean we have to all the time.

Considering how much waste is produced and resources that are used for our meat consumption, it's a small sacrifice to go meat-free once to twice a week.

Here's some more info on the environmental impact of our meat production (its remarkably hard to find unbiased articles on the net about this subject... lots of gung-ho vegan articles, of which I doubt the credibility of their facts, no offense to all you extreme vegans out there):

"Most of the world’s water is used for agriculture. However, production and processing of meat requires a disproportionate amount of water compared to any other form of food production. Industrial-scale feedlots can house hundreds of animals, thereby creating enormous pressure on local water supplies. According to our calculations, water used for meat production and processing accounts for 14% of the environmental impacts the average Canadian household has on aquatic habitat. (See The Science of the Challenge for these calculations.) In arid regions, livestock competes against humans for water... The second greatest impact of meat production is on land. Meat production is the world’s largest user of land, for pastures and through the use of arable land for fodder crops. In Canada, livestock numbers have increased over the last five years for cattle (4.4%), pigs (26.4%), chickens (23.4%) and sheep (46%). This astonishing growth in livestock means that the production of cereal crops raised for feed must increase. This only increases the burden on land and water. "

(Pazderka, Catherine et al., The Green Guide to David Suzuki's Nature Challenge, 2008)

Here's a fun blog that you might want to check out sometime, kind of reminds me of a book I read recently (My Year of Living Biblically, by A.J Jacobs). The site seems to be about some guy that has been trying to completely eliminate his environmental impact: http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/
(Apparently they're making it into a book AND a movie!)

Here are his "facts" (I only put "facts" in quotation marks because I can't seem to access his sources, but I am ready to believe what he has put down) about eating meat:

18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from livestock (more than from transportation).

70 percent of previously forested land in the Amazon was cleared to pasture cattle.

Two-thirds (64 percent) of anthropogenic ammonia emissions, which contribute significantly to acid rain and acidification of ecosystems, come from cattle.

The livestock sector accounts for over 8 percent of global human water use, while 64 percent of the world’s population will live in water-stressed areas by 2025.

The world’s largest source of water pollution is believed to be the livestock sector.

In the United States, livestock are responsible for a third of the loads of nitrogen and phosphorus into freshwater resources.

Livestock account for about 20 percent of the total terrestrial animal biomass, and the 30 percent of the earth’s land surface that they now pre-empt was once habitat for wildlife, in an era of unprecedented threats to biodiversity.

These problems will only get worse as meat production is expected to double by 2050.

(No Impact Man, 2007, Accessed Jan.19, 2009. http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/2007/08/why-the-no-impa.html)
Today is Monday, and I already ate some meat with my sandwich. I think tomorrow will be one of my No-Meat days for this week.