Vegetarianism is growing so popular so fast that it has become some sort of nutritional trend. People who eat meat are castigated and seen as the prime enemies of the environment. Prominent people have come out to defend vegetarianism, even going as far as claiming that the diet reversed a health condition they were battling. Actress Anne Hathaway, for instance, adopted vegetarianism because she “wanted to lose weight” (Booth n.p). She backtracked barely three years later, noting that she neither felt healthy nor strong from her change of diet. The misunderstanding could also be true for environmental justifications for vegetarianism. Many more people have adopted a vegan diet because of the buzz and later abandoned it after digging deep and finding facts around the vegetarianism. While the growing number of proponents of vegetarianism have claimed that the diet is wholesomely better for the environment, the reality is that certain vegetables consume more water, require more energy during production than meat, and, as a result, increase emissions thus greatly endangering the environment.
A renowned Czech model, Petra Nemcova, and many others adopted vegetarianism because it could “save the planet”, the truth is, eating a vegan diet could be better than meat for our environment (Smith n.p.). In fact, Egan (n.p.) explicitly states that a vegetarian diet could save the planet because it reduces emissions, groundwater pollution, and animal-waste runoff. The claim is not only untrue but also introduces an entirely trivial matter of very little concern for environmentalists and conservationists - animal waste runoff. In most discussions between vegetarianism and the environment, animal-waste runoff is seldom a significant topic because while they could be a problem in some places, it is more of a sanitation issue than a real environmental concern. In fact, animal-waste runoff could benefit the environment when they decompose and release life-giving nutrients to plants. Since it is argued that forestation reduces greenhouse gas emissions, the fact that animal-waste runoff supports the growth of vegetation could mean that it has a net impact of reducing carbon footprint. Yet this argument could just be as trivial as the associated claim that vegetarianism saves the planet through the reduction of animal-waste runoff. However, if the claim was to be accurate, the solution would not be vegetarianism. According to Livestock and Poultry Environmental Learning Community (LPELC) (n.p.), animal-waste runoff, considered as manure, end up in water and reduces the quality and standards of environmental water. Solving this through vegetarianism is just moving from one problem to the other. Vast amounts of chemicals are often used in growing crops and vegetables. Every stage of a crop’s growth needs particular chemical sprays to kill pests. These chemicals evaporate and become part of the water, thus causing significant pollution to the environment. It is important to note that while there are numerous proven ways of reducing animal-waste runoffs, it is almost close to impossible to avoid using chemicals for crop growth, thus making vegetarianism a worse polluter of environmental water than eating meat.