As I was thinking about what eco friendly lifestyle or green lifestyle topic I could talk about this week, I came across some super initiatives that are already being used, things you can get behind.
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| Photo by Gabriel Manlake on UnsplashU |
Unless you specifically look, you might think that nothing is being done to help the planet, but you would be wrong. Granted it is only a small handful of people doing amazing things but the interest in people wanting to change to a greener lifestyle is growing, and will continue to grow. As let's face it, it's the ONLY VIABLE SOLUTION to save our beautiful planet.
So what is one of the great eco-friendly things that are going on that you can get behind?
One of the things being a vegan, I wouldn't eat, but it is the use of insects as an alternative source of high protein. I mean think about it. This is such a positive solution to the growing food population problem and the predicted population rise to 9 billion by 2050.
Middle Eastern, African, Asian and other cultures have eaten insects for hundreds if not thousands of years.
Who hasn't heard of cooked locusts?
Who hasn't watched those celebrity shows where they eat what's in the jungle? (I have to hold my hand up to that one, I have never seen one of those shows.)
There are insect farms popping up all over the world.
Cricket farming started in the Netherlands and has spread over the world.
A YouTube clip from cricket farming in Kenya show the versatility of what cricket protein can be made into. Biscuits, bread, animal feed, chocolate coated crickets
In England, one cricket farm in the North of England has been in operation over 4 years.
Cricket products are available on Amazon and other places as well. But because it is currently expensive to produce a kilo of cricket flour, it hasn't really taken off as an alternate high protein, highly digestible, food source for the masses, but make no mistake. This will happen in the future.
Raising crickets, black soldier flies or other varieties of insects, such as meal worms, is environmentally very sound. It's a way to drastically reduce greenhouse gasses for the reasons listed below:
| Cricket Farming |
1) The area of land to raise an insect farm commercially can be the size of a shipping container or larger, or, you can raise your own. They only need clean plastic boxes, egg cartons and moist cotton wool to collect the eggs, so you can raise them in a garden shed. When you compare that to the size of land needed to rear cows, pigs, or even chickens, for that matter, there's no comparison in the carbon footprint of land it reduces..
2) Insects can be fed on left over food waste from supermarkets and restaurants. Instead of throwing away excess food into landfill, where it will produce CO2 emissions as it rots down. Insects can eat it and thus cut out the CO2 emissions.
3) Insects are high in protein. Unlike mammals who eat to keep warm this is not the case with insects. The food they eat allows them to become a higher protein food themselves. They can also be fed on protein chicken feed.
4) The mortality of insects is very short. They soon die after laying eggs. If a fly lives up to six months, that's a very long time. Most insects have a life expectancy of around 90 days, so the system is very sustainable and renewable.
5) Flies require heat to hatch their eggs, so even the heat source, i.e. heat lamps, heat pads, or industrial heating schemes can be generated from using green technologies such as solar, wind turbines, microwavable boilers or solar and hydrogen power in the near future.
6) Egg hatching can take between 2 - 4 weeks depending on the level of heat in the incubation box.
6) It's a win, win situation and many countries are getting behind or being lobbied to get behind insect farming now that independent farmers have already proven that the system works.
One such project has been given the go ahead in the UK. The Government have given millions of pounds, along with Tesco in funding the building of an industrial sized insect farm outside of London.
The Scottish people are also lobbying their Government to get behind a similar farming system.
Black Soldier Fly Farming
The black soldier fly farm is being built to provide protein to be used in animal feed, reduce carbon emissions from food waste and universities are also looking at being able to put fly lava to other uses.
Finally on a different subject relating to farming:
Environmentally Friendly Low Carbon Farming
Running a bokashi and using fly lava as additional fertilizer, if needed, could put farming on a completely different path. A path of low carbon, artificial fertiliser and toxic free farming that's cost effective and has a low carbon footprint.
Bokashi cuts out the need to use fertilizer because it doesn't leak out nitrogen or anything else, It is nutrient rich and only takes 10 days to reach the end point from when waste is first put in the bokashi bins.
This is fantastic. I'm sure that this is just the beginning.
This is something you can get behind by!
Use bokashi yourself, if you have a garden, allotment or even pots with soil in that will allow it to breakdown.
Let everyone know about these beautiful green options.
Buy from farmers who are using green technology and toxic free farming to raise their plants and livestock.
When insect powder becomes available for human consumption, try it as an alternative to the animal protein you already eat.
If you fancy raising your own small cricket farm there's tons of information on the internet how to do it.
Look out next week for my next super exciting find on how so many people are making green technologies available right now for us to use and to help save our planet.
