Now more than ever a vegetarian diet is an option worth considering for those wanting to substantially reduce their carbon footprint. Many people who adopt a vegetarian diet are motivated by a desire to live with greater respect and feelings of protection for the animals and the Earth’s resources.
How a vegetarian lifestyle supports the environment:
- Worthwhile use of food: a steer that provides 200 kg of meat enables the preparation of about 1500 meals; with the cereal it ate, about 18000 meals could have been made.
- Worthwhile use of water: 1 kilo of meat requires at least 15000 – 30000 litres; 1 kilo of wheat requires at least 1000 litres.
- Worthwhile use of soil: a field of land can produce 6000 kg carrots, or 4000 kg apples, or 1000 kg cherries, or only 50 kg beef.
- Preventing deforestation: about 70% of arable land on earth is used for cattle-raising and growing cereals to feed them; enough land to feed the whole world population many times vegetarian; but even now, every minute, man destroys an area of forest equivalent to 5 football fields.
- Preventing air and water pollution: about 50% of water pollution in Europe is due to intensive animal farming; the pollution comes from slurry, manure and chemical fertilizers; every day, 2 million tons of this waste pollutes the Earth’s water.
By adopting a vegetarian lifestyle, more land, more water, and more food is available and less nature is destroyed or polluted. Sources:
“Livestock’s Long Shadow (2006) – FAO, For the environment Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases (1990) – W.H.O.
"Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances of survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet." Albert Einstein
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slideshow for more information.
Living in Harmony with our natural resources 
The Brahma Kumaris has been actively involved in the research and demonstration of alternative renewable energy concepts for more than 15 years. Apart from being an expression of respect for the natural resources and providing sustainable energy for the BK community, it has also been an opportunity to work together with other organisations and institutes to learn and share new technologies for wider use.
Building a Solar Energy Power Plant
“India One“, an innovative 1 Mw solar thermal power plant is currently being constructed at the Shantivan Campus of the Brahma Kumaris headquarters, Abu Road, Rajasthan, India.
This project uses 770 newly developed 60m2 parabolic dishes and features thermal storage for continuous operation. The plant will generate enough heat and power for the campus of 20,000 people and will provide a sustainable model for decentralized solar energy generation, in India.
“India One” is executed by the World Renewal Spiritual Trust (a sister organization of the Brahma Kumaris) and partly funded by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy Sources (MNRE), India and the German Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU). For more details, visit www.india-one.net
The video below explains the background to this project. Please wait a few minutes for the video to load.
Solar Turbine Project
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Factsheet
Solar Energy installations for large communities
Innovative solar research projects have lead towards new technologies for large-scale solar steam
cooking system for communities as well as intelligent standalone photovoltaic system ranging from 5 to 200 kw.
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Earth Care Workshop
Earth Care Workshop is suitable for use in organisations as part of the sustainability initiatives, to help promote greater ownership of environmental policies and more caring lifestyles.
Deepening our Earth Care
We already have the technology to live in true harmony with nature, but these technologies are unlikely to solve our problems until those of us in a position to choose, make the choice for simpler lives motivated by kindness and compassion for the Earth.
In the spirit of allowing time for realisation of new perspectives, we are making available a series of gentle transformational workshops and reflections. These will help us connect more deeply to both our authentic self and the Earth’s needs in order to impact sustainable lifestyle choices. We hope you will try them out for yourself and use what you think will work best for your organisation and communities.
Free downloads
Also available to help sustain those changes are downloadable “reflections” to experience calm, enhance creativity and feel a deeper sense of connection with nature.
Open source
These resources are made available as ‘open source’ materials, with a creative commons copyright – which means they can be used freely, improved by experience, and only used for non- commercial purposes.
Feedback
We also hope that you will feel inspired to send us your feedback, and make improvements where you can, so that the process can evolve and become more effective as is gets passed around the global community. Feedback to: http://earthcare.posterous.com
“The moment we discover that real treasures lie within, we will have an open heart, a generous heart, a heart that is able to share. We will then know that things really do not belong to us. We are here at this moment and we can care for things, but also they exist to be shared with all others around us. I believe that this is the change that that can bring about a transformation within society. It is a change that has to happen within ourselves, but as it happens within us, it can also be shared with the world.” BK Jayanti
More workshops available under Resources.