PB&J Campaign Celebrates National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day. It’s Green Living!

The PB&J Campaign is an effort of private citizens concerned about the environment. The campaign kciks off on April 2, 2011 and THEY ARE NOT a front for the National Peanut Board, animal rights groups, or even Smuckers.

The bottom line of savings when you eat a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich you:

• Save Land: 24 Square Feet
• Conserve Water: 133 Gallons
• Greenhouse Gas Emissions: 2.5 Pounds

The PB&J Campaign is a web-based environmental advocacy project that encourages consumers to eat a plant-based meal to help the environment. The PB&J Campaign is a project of Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs (www.saveourplanet.org).

This campaign is working to combat environmental destruction by reducing the amount of animal products people eat. The PB&J Campaign approaches positive change one meal at a time by illuminating the differences one single dining decision can make.

How Bad Could Another Sandwich Be on Green Living?

The inefficiency of transferring energy from step to step means each step in the food chain requires a relatively big layer of inputs to support it. So each step you add multiplies the inputs you need at the very bottom (water, land, fertilizer, chemicals).

In any pyramid, taking out a level lets you shrink the base. So, when you cut the livestock step out and eat plants directly, it takes a lot less of the plants to support you. 

You also save the inputs that go into the plants. You save fossil fuels, water, land, fertilizers, and pesticides. You also save extra greenhouse gas emissions from fertilizer and burning fossil fuels, and you save water pollution from chemicals and silt washing off fields into waterways.

And if that’s not enough, you save on the resources used in raising the animals – yet more land and water. You also save the animal waste that is its own pollution problem, not to mention more greenhouse gas emissions like methane from enteric fermentation (a fancy way of saying cow burps).

All this is why the water it takes to produce the beef on one burger could produce peanuts for about 17 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and the land that it takes to produce that beef could produce peanuts for 19 PB&Js. It’s also why the livestock sector is responsible for 18 percent of global climate change, and why you can fight global warming by having a PB&J for lunch.

Where to Find Them

Please check out our Facebook Cause and join up. You can also follow us on Twitter. AND we’re always looking for volunteers. Drop us a note if you’re interested.