Responsible Eating

I've read a lot recently about the environmental effects of the production of our food, in particular meat. I thought this might be as good a time as any to mention the subject, it being Ramadan. This is a month we can dedicate to our conscience and a time when fasting should give us a more frugal attitude towards food.
The global consumption of meat has become a topic of concern among environmentalists and is something for us to think about here in Oman, which is a population of fervent meat-eaters. This will be brought further into context soon with Eid al-Adha on its way (the defining feature of this holiday being the slaughter of animals). Even on regular days red meat, which once would have been considered a luxury, and still is in many parts of the globe, is eaten frequently. For many families it would be considered bad hospitality not to serve such an excessive amount of meat to guests that they would barely be able to make an impression in it (forgive me for generalising, I'm sure its not universally the case).
Besides the well-known health risks of consuming too much read meat, there are some really startling environmental factors. Meat production requires vast amounts of water and grain and the animals' waste is pollutant (cow manure emits methane and nitrous oxide). For the grain alone,huge areas of the world's rain forests have had to be destroyed. The production of beef produces 24 times the amount of greenhouse gases as vegetables. Apparently, 12,000 gallons of water is required to produce one pound of beef, compared with 60 for the same weight in potatoes. And its not just industrial-sized confined factories; free-range meat has the same requirements but also needs substantial amounts of space.
I may seem like some ranting vegetarian but I'm not, I just believe in valuing moderation, not excess. The world's population is bursting along with its consumption, and a little moderation would definitely go a long way. I think the shocking stats are a deterrent enough (although if that doesn't do it the talk about methane certainly does).

Its not looking so tasty now is it?!

Recycling driving me environ-mental

When it comes to the environment, Oman authorities appear to be progressing rather well. As well as nature preservation (which I may look into another time), there are various campaigns targeted at public awareness, such as trying to get people to use less plastic bags and to stop people throwing their rubbish outside. There is also the Save Energy Oman campaign with the cute Oryx mascot. They provide simple tips to save power like using energy saving light bulbs and turning lights off when not in the room. (Perhaps Lulu Hypermarket should have a little look into that and take down just some of the thousands of brightly coloured flashing lights from around their stores.)

Recycling is being facilitated to an extent. According to the non-governmental organisation Environment Society of Oman (ESO), paper recycling bins have been placed in various schools and the organisation themselves assist 40 companies with their paper recycling.

As far as I'm aware recycling for the general public hasn't had a great deal of attention. I've been having my own issues with this...in England I always recycled what I could of my household waste. It's easy there because the local Council take it from your house for free. There isn't such a service here; according to the Ministry of Information website this scheme wouldn't be cost effective in rural areas which are remote. A fair point although they don't mention anything about Muscat and other big areas. It pains me to throw away so many recyclable things. The bins in the schools aren't much good to me because I don't have children so I'm not likely to be going to a school. A while ago my husband read that there were plastic bottle recycling bins being put up around Muscat so I started saving all of our empty water bottles and once there were a few bags full we thought we'd find out where the bins are. My husband called Muscat Municipality who had no idea what he was talking about. Now, I can see on the ESO website that there are in fact plastic bottle recycling bins around Muscat, but it doesn't say where. Someone must know where they are???