Student Guide to Sustainable Living
Authors, design & photos Alexandra Lamp Chantal Brugge Youri Haak Special thanks Maddy Vollebregt Anniek Kortleve Published by GreenTU Delft November 2020
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Welcome to our guide about sustainability! This is the first edition of a book series for students like you to guide you to a greener lifestyle. This practical guide introduces tips and tricks for affordable sustainability at home. These books are developed in collaboration with GreenTU. They are run by students with help from the university and aim to improve the sustainability of both the academic curriculum and operations at the university. Before you go any further into this guide, we recommend taking a quiz on how your lifestyle impacts the world with the QR-code on the left. Treat this book as a journal and have fun! Alex, Chantal & Youri
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As with most things in life, too much of a good thing can still be (very) bad. Having a diverse diet can be beneficial not only to your health, but also to the impact these foods have on the planet. When evaluating the impact of food it’s important to keep two things in mind. First, which part of the food production chain you’re looking at. And second, to use the correct indicators to base the final verdict on. Therefore we will focus on the CO2 footprint, land use, water footprint and social impacts.
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CO2 Footprint The CO2 footprint might be the most commonly known impact factor of our food system. And although this might sound a little abstract, it does put these impacts into perspective relative to one another. Especially since the differences between some of these foods can be quite large.
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Comparing the impact of chicken to that of beef, based on the same amount of protein, the emissions from beef production are almost 9 times that of chicken! Comparing these to vegetables, once again looking at the same amount of protein, these differences easily reach a factor of 100. Even the highest impacting vegetable proteins emit less CO2 than the least impactful types of animal protein. The way these equivalents are often calculated is by looking at the entire production chain that is needed to get both the hamburger and the piece of lettuce sitting on that burger, on your plate. At each step along the chain there are processes that produce harmful emissions, from farm vehicles, to transport or packaging. So, a locally farmed lettuce requires fewer steps to find its way to your plate than a steak from South America.
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Land Use & Biodiversity Loss Another important factor is the amount of land we need to make our food. It does not matter if you have a lot or less space: land used for agriculture cannot be used for something else anymore. Transforming this into a giant plot of farmland for growing one specific type of crop can severely damage the natural balance in that region.
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Like in our previous example, meat scores by far the worst in this category. In some cases requiring over 50 times more land than vegetables. In order to get 1 kg of meat, you need to feed these animals with more than 1 kg of animal feed, which needs to be farmed as well. In most cases it’s a lot more efficient to eat the grown vegetables directly rather than first feeding them to a cow.
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Water Footprint
Besides high-quality, nutrient-rich land, water is essential for growing or farming any kind of food. Depending on the location this can be more of a problem when water is scarce. This is why in many of the more useful researches, they have taken the scarcity of this water into account in weighing the relative water footprint of your food.
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So, when the country of origin has a very limited water supply for agriculture and other uses, you’ll see this reflected in the score. This is one of those instances that makes picking a meal with a low impact more difficult. Although the greenhouse gas emissions and land use of cheese are a lot lower than those of beef, water use is comparable and in some cases even higher.
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Social Impacts
It’s sometimes easy to get lost in the abstract numbers of emissions and other impacts of our food system and consumption patterns. But what does your choice of food mean for the people involved in getting it from the field to your plate? Many products we consume on a daily basis come from only a couple of places in the world, take coffee, the number one fuel for your student career, as an example. This is mainly grown in regions close to the equator, better known as the coffee belt. So, are these people working in safe and pleasant conditions, and do they get fairly compensated for their work? But also, how are our large multinationals impacting their local economies? You can imagine that large companies could potentially price local farmers out of the market when using modern automated farming processes or genetically modified crops that are not accessible to the local farmers.
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When buying products from far-away tropical places it’s often a good idea to keep an eye out for labels such as “FairTrade International” or “Max Havelaar”. Although, even these can never guarantee 100% perfect working conditions.
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Enough about the impacts of our eating habits, let’s talk dinner. We hope you’re hungry by now, we definitely were at the time of writing. Which is why the next couple of pages provide you with some tasty meals that won’t take too much time away from your schedule. They’re meant for 4 people or 2 very hungry students. We’ve made all of them ourselves, so we know they’re good. Of course you can always create your own variations, go nuts!
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Falafel Wraps with Tzatziki Tortilla wraps Falafel Red onion Garlic Aubergine Zucchini
8 400 g 1 2 cloves 1 1
Fresh spinach Tzatziki Oregano Thyme Basil
100 g 150 g ½ tsp ½ tsp ½ tsp
Finely chop the onion and garlic, fry for 3 mins. Dice the aubergine and zucchini, add the aubergine first and the zucchini 3 mins later. Fry these for a total of 5 mins. Add the falafel, the herbs and another splash of oil, and fry until the falafel turn golden brown. Salt and pepper generously. Warm up your wraps, spread some tzatziki on them and add some fresh spinach. Now top it off with a spoonful of your veggie and falafel mixture. Enjoy!
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Spicy Meat Wraps with Avocado Tortilla wraps 8 (Vegan) minced meat 450 g Kidney beans 400 g Bell peppers 2
Avocado Grated cheese Fajita seasoning mix Spicy taco sauce
1 150 g 25 g 1 jar
Dice the bell peppers, start with frying the meat. Add the bell peppers after 5 mins and fry for another 2 mins. Mix the fajita mix with ca. 50 ml of tap water, add to the pan while stirring. Simmer for a few mins, then add the kidney beans. Dice the avocado and heat the wraps according to their instructions. Fill each wrap with the meat mixture and top with avocado, cheese and taco sauce. Yummy!
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Sweet Potato & Beetroot Oven Pie Puff pastry Sweet potatoes Beetroot Feta cheese
1 roll 300 g 300 g 200 g
Mascarpone Muhammara Fresh parsley
150 g 200 g 10 g
Preheat your oven to 200 °C. Spread the puff pastry onto a baking tray. Mix the Mascarpone and Muhammara and cover the puff pastry right up to the edges. Peel the sweet potatoes and beetroot, and make slices roughly 3 mm thick. Mix the slices with oil, pepper and salt. Keeping the sweet potato and beetroot slices separate prevents the potato slices from going red. Cover the puff pastry in alternating rows of sweet potato and beetroot slices. Bake for 20 minutes. Serve with crumbled feta cheese and coarsely chopped parsley. Delicious!
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Not Too Spicy Veggie Curry Red onion Cauliflower Pumpkin Chickpeas
2 400 g 400 g 400 g
Peeled tomatoes Tikka Masala Naan bread Greek yoghurt
400 g 1 jar 2 100 g
Halve the onions and cut in thin slices. Dice the pumpkin and cut the cauliflower into florets. Fry the onion for 3 mins, then add the Tikka Masala and fry for another 2 mins. Add the pumpkin and cauliflower and fry for 6 mins. Meanwhile, rinse the chickpeas with cold tap water. Add them, together with the peeled tomatoes, to the rest. Bring up to a light boil, then leave to simmer for about 10 mins. Prepare the naan bread according to its instructions. Serve the curry with naan and yoghurt. Caution, might be hot!
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