Sustainable living is about living a life that attempts to reduce the use of earths natural resources where people aim to reduce their ecological footprint by altering their home designs, methods of transportation and diet.
Eating Tasmanian Lenah Wallaby is a key plank in living a sustainable and ecologically balanced life. Most Australians, however, know very little about how kangaroo and wallaby meat is harvested and what environmental, ethical, cultural and health implications our growing taste for kangaroo meat may present.
In responding to climate change, many concerned people are looking for actions they can take as individuals. Livestock today account for about 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than all the world’s cars and trucks combined. Methane is 27 times worse than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas. Cattle and sheep emit large volumes of methane as a by-product of their digestive system.
The amount of methane emitted by any one animal depends on a range of factors, not the least of which is their diet.
The concept of ‘embedded carbon’ represents the amount of carbon which has been released to produce a food. It has been estimated that boneless beef from Australian grass-fed cattle has between 19.8-27.1 kg of embedded carbon per kg of boneless beef. However, these estimates can rise by up to 34% when land-use related emissions are included (3).
Wallaby and kangaroos on the other hand emit almost no methane as a result of a completely different digestive system (4).
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