Adopting a Plant-Based Diet and Saying No to Food Waste

Published by Rosemary Cornell on 12/30/2025 01/02/2026

My mom used to say, “Eat all your veggies and lick your plate clean”. Well not the “lick” part, since she was a proper lady who treated manners like the ten commandments, but you get my drift. She was no scientist, but was spot-on in agreement with what science informs us today.

Did you know that some of the most impactful things you can do as an individual to mitigate climate change damage relate to your diet? According to several research and policy organizations, such as Drawdown.org and the World Resources Institute, adopting a plant-based diet and reducing food waste is ranked in the top 14 actions that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from individuals and households.¹

Globally, if everyone adopted these steps, the GHG emissions reduction would amount to over 200 billion tons of CO₂ equivalent over a 30 year period.

In North America, switching out gas and coal with renewable energy for electricity generation, and using this green power for transportation and heating/cooling our buildings would be even more impactful, since we travel more and use way more power in our daily lives than say the average Indian or African. However, the figures for the food footprint of Canadians are still stark. 

Food Waste

According to Second Harvest, Canada generates 2.2 million tonnes of avoidable household food waste, or 19% of all food produced in Canada. This waste generates 25 million tonnes of CO₂, equivalent to five million gas-powered cars on the road, and adds up to an astonishing $58 billion dollars. The average Canadian household wasted 79 kg of food/year in 2019.²

These figures sound staggering. I am, and I hope you are, appalled by them. Where is the waste coming from? It comes at every level of the food cycle, from farmers planting more than they can sell, spoilage in the fields or in transit, over-stocking in the grocery or supermarket, poor utilization in restaurants, spoilage in the back of our fridges, and failing to lick our plates clean! 

Given this information, there are obvious ways to reduce waste. One of the solutions that is gaining traction is food rescue. Second Harvest is a Canada-wide food rescue program. In Vancouver, Food Runners collects “unsellable” food from markets and restaurants and delivers it to community kitchens and schools. They diverted three million kg of food from the landfill in five years of operation. Here on SḴŦAḴ | Mayne Island there is a community food pantry that accepts perishable and non-perishable food, so if you bought more than you need – put it to excellent use!³

 Most people do not know that the “best before” date on packaged foods relates to best flavour, and not safety or nutrition.⁴ So there’s no need to discard that tomato paste with a best before date of last year; use it! To avoid spoilage in the fridge – plan your meals around what’s available in the fridge, and use that up before you buy more.

One nice benefit of eliminating food waste is that you will save lots of money! Groceries are getting quite expensive, in case you haven’t noticed.

Diet Change

A few weeks before Jane Goodall passed away, the CBC aired an interview with her. She used this platform to explain to people why adopting a plant-based diet is crucial if civilization is to thrive in this age of climate and biodiversity peril. The major biodiversity stressor globally is agriculture. 50% of the land outside of rock and ice is used for agriculture. 38% is devoted to livestock: 30% for grazing land, and 8% just for growing crops to feed the livestock.⁵ Raising all that livestock also puts enormous pressure on our water supplies, and is a leading cause of water pollution. That information alone should tell us that all this “meat” production is problematic for the species that share this planet with us.

But there is much more.  Have a look at the graph below showing the greenhouse gas footprint of food. You will notice that beef far outweighs all other food sources. The CO₂ equivalent per kg of beef is 250 times greater than that of nuts. (Sadly, chocolate is not much better, but fortunately the figure for beer, which is not shown in this graph, is less than 2 kgCO₂equivalent/kg, or around the same impact as tomatoes.)

Just cutting out beef and lamb would have a big impact. And it doesn’t have to be overnight. If you are an entrenched carnivore, just start by reducing the amount of meat in your diet by eating smaller portions less frequently, or substituting beef for chicken, or even better, eating fallow deer.

Here on SḴŦAḴ | Mayne Island we have an ecosystem crisis, with too many deer destroying the understory. Substituting fallow deer for beef in your diet would lower your personal GHG emissions and help to solve a biodiversity crisis. There are reasons to hope that with pending provincial government action, this may become a viable option in the near future, if requests by the Mayne Island Deer Management Society are successful.⁶

Plant-based diets have co-benefits for your health and community. The average North American consumes nearly double the amount of protein each day than is required for optimum nutrition (~1 g protein/kg body weight). The excess protein is because we eat more than our fair share of meat and dairy.⁷ It is not difficult to get adequate protein even with a strict vegan diet. One cup of cooked lentils supplies around the same amount of protein as a 3-oz salmon fillet (~20 g). A high ratio of plant protein: animal protein is linked to a 27% decrease in coronary artery disease.⁸

Globally, replacing monocultures (such as acres and acres of corn to feed livestock) with forests would sequester CO2 and create habitat for wildlife. Plant-based meals are also gorgeous and mouth-watering to behold. You can go crazy with colour by incorporating half a dozen different veggies. And if you are ready to jump into veganism whole-heartedly, know that Jane Goodall will be ”smiling down at you from above.”

References

1. https://www.wri.org/insights/climate-friendly-choices-ranked ↩︎
2. https://www.secondharvest.ca/post/new-report-from-second-harvest-reveals-canadas-58-billion-food-waste-problem ↩︎
3. https://mayneislandfoodbank.com/donate/ ↩︎
4. https://davidsuzuki.org/living-green/decode-best-before-expiry-date-labels ↩︎
5. https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/2021-02/2021-02-03-food-system-biodiversity-loss-benton-et-al_0.pdf ↩︎
6. https://maynedeer.ca/news-events/ ↩︎
7. https://nchstats.com/daily-protein-intake-much-more-than-recommended/ ↩︎
8. https://nchstats.com/daily-protein-intake-much-more-than-recommended/ ↩︎