Green Monday is a global sustainability initiative that was designed to promote green lifestyle choices.  In this video Phil Valko, assistant vice chancellor for sustainability at Washington University in St. Louis, talks about the global Green Monday initiative and how making a small change to one’s food choices can have a major impact.

The first progress report of A Better Retailing Climate initiative has been published. It describes how retailers since 2005 have improved their performance against the environmental targets set out in the initiative, and that they have:

In this study, 483 food items (developed by the Casino Group retailer company) were grouped into 34 categories and then 5 major food groups; meat and meat products, milk and dairy products, processed fruits and vegetables, grains and other foods and sweets. The aggregated average carbon footprints of the categories and major food groups were presented per 100 gram of product, per 100 kcal of product and per two different nutrient density scores including six and 15 nutrients respectively.

This new study finds that GHG emissions from growing crops and raising livestock are now higher than from deforestation and land use change. It combines three global datasets of greenhouse gas emissions for the 'Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Uses' (AFOLU) sector. It includes emissions from different sectors and human activities such as deforestation, clearing and burning biomass, and from raising and feeding livestock.

The booklet The susDISH analysis method – Sustainability in the catering industry, taking account of both nutritional and environmental aspects in recipe planning is published by the Institute of Agricultural and Nutritional Sciences of the Halle-Wittenberg University.

In the 'Carnivore's Dilemma', part of National Geographic’s special series on The Future of Food, Robert Kunzick (National Geographic’s senior environmental editor) contributes to the current meat debate by discussing his visit to 'Cactus Feeders', the company that operates 9 feed yards in Kansas, USA. He explores the role of pharmaceuticals and hormones for the health and productivity of the animals and also discusses environmental issues including water supply, beef’s carbon footprint and feedlots.  For the complete article with infographics and photographs, see here.

The following two reports deal with food waste costs and mitigation. The first report focuses on costs and introduces a methodology that allows for full-cost accounting (FCA) of the food waste footprint, including costs associated with the environmental impacts of food waste. The FCA framework incorporates market based evaluations of the direct financial costs, non-market valuation of lost ecosystem goods and services and well-being valuation to assess the social costs associated with natural resource degradation.

This blog discusses the June Business Forum meeting organised by the Food Ethics Council which saw businesses and NGOs coming together to consider how industry and government discusses issues of food consumption and choice now, and how this might need to change.

A major new report released by a commission of global leaders finds that governments and businesses can improve economic growth and reduce their carbon emissions together. Rapid technological innovation and new investment in infrastructure are making it possible today to tackle climate change at the same time as improving economic performance.