SOCIAL NORMS & INFLUENCING OTHERS
WK3 - Plant-Rich Diet, Food Waste, and Composting

Perhaps equally important to slashing your own footprint is influencing others to do the same. To help you share your journey and promote the ideas and tools that can help others on theirs, we’ve compiled the examples below.

When someone else reduces their emissions as a result of your actions, you’re doing even more than your fair share!

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Spread the word through your social media accounts, text messages or, good old-fashioned conversations with your friends and family.

Pro Tip: Add one of these to your email signature.

1. Your Story
“I’m taking a 6-week course to slash my footprint because I want to do my part. Let me know if I can help you with what I’m learning!”	“I just learned the many benefits of eating a more plant based-diet. These next couple weeks, I am going to try out being a weekday vegetarian! Who wants to join me?”	“I’m going to start composting! Not only is it fun and rewarding, it also lowers my carbon footprint and creates valuable fertilizer.”
Q: I’m going to try meal planning to make it easier to eat a more plant-based diet AND avoid unnecessary food waste. Does anyone have any recipes I should try?	Q: Does anyone compost in their apartment? If so, I’d love to hear what methods work best for you.	“Q: I want to stop eating beef and lamb to reduce my carbon footprint. Has anyone else done this? How do I make it easy”
2. Something You've Learned
The average American throws out a pound of food every day, leading to massive emissions from food rotting in landfills. Composting prevents this and creates valuable fertilizer. Wasting less food helps fight climate change!	You can significantly reduce your food footprint by simply reducing your consumption of beef, lamb, and cheese by substituting with other meats, replacements or vegetables.	Beef has 100x the carbon footprint of beans! Easy way to be better for the environment? Eat less beef!
The world eating half as much meat...is the same as if half the world was vegetarian.	Food that you throw in the trash ends up in the landfill and digests anaerobically (without oxygen) thereby creating methane, which is a very powerful greenhouse gas. Composting prevents this!	Reduce food waste by helping stuff last longer...Put lemon on avocados, rinse berries with diluted vinegar and stand herbs and asparagus in water.
The meat and dairy industries create 7.1 GIGATONS of greenhouse gases annually—that’s 14.5% of TOTAL man-made emissions.	Meat is a very inefficient middleman between you and vegetables. It takes 32 pounds of feed to produce 1 pound of beef!	Globally, 61% of all food waste comes from households and accounts for 8% of global carbon emissions!
68% of the food we throw away in our homes is edible. Reduce food waste by planning ahead, buying only what you need and storing food properly!	In 2020, the plant-based food market in the US grew 27% – twice the rate of the retail food market, according to the Good Food Institute.	Food waste rotting in landfills is a massive source of methane emissions. Methane is more than 25x as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.
4. Inspiring Quotes
"One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.” -E.M. Forster	“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” -Chinese Proverb	“Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read.” -César Chávez
“A man who has committed a mistake and doesn’t correct it, is committing another mistake.” -Confucius	"It is not enough to be compassionate – you must act." -The Dali Lama	"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." -Theodore Roosevelt
5. Repost
The Carbonauts Instagram Twitter LinkedIn	NRDC Instagram Twitter Facebook	Greta Thunberg Instagram Twitter
Treehugger Instagram Twitter	Get.waste.ed Instagram	Sustainably Vegan Instagram