8 Ways Your Eating Habits are Affecting Climate Change

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The global food system produces...

about 1/4 of man-made greenhouse gas emissions each year. Food production begins with agriculture, which involves farming and harvesting the land, breeding and raising livestock. Next, there's food and livestock transportation, food processing and packaging, followed by distribution and storage. Once the food is distributed from large scale manufacturers (farmers, factories, producers) to consumer-facing businesses (restaurants, supermarkets and other retailers), the next step is cooking the food and then, of course, eating it! But that's not all. Whatever gets thrown in your garbage that isn't recyclable then gets transported to landfills to rot, releasing more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. All of these processes generate more than 17 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year.