PB&J Campaign Blog

The PB&J Campaign has officially partnered with A Well-Fed World (AWFW), which strives to create a future in which everybody has access to nutritious, affordable, and sustainable food. AWFW focuses on plant-based solutions that help keep both people and the planet healthy. The PB&J Campaign fits in wonderfully with all these goals.

We’ll maintain the project’s combination of information, inspiration, and imagination. Plus we’ll also try out some new ideas.

Everyone at the PB&J Campaign and AWFW is excited about this new partnership, and we look forward to positively changing the world, with your help, one sandwich at a time.

The PB&J Campaign is based on faith in the laws of supply and demand. The idea is that when any of us buys lunch, or goes shopping at the supermarket, or orders a meal off a menu, our purchase encourages the production of what we bought and does not provide encouragement for what we didn’t buy. Buy more beef and you encourage producers to produce more beef, even if it takes a while for the market to react. Buy more peanut butter or lentils instead of the beef you were buying before, and you encourage producers to produce a little less beef. Since the production of beef uses more land, water, and fuel and produces more waste, including greenhouse gas emissions, than the peanuts or the lentils, these individual decisions can add up to environmental impact.

Unfortunately this relationship between demand for food and environmental impact is easy to observe in the negative. The current scary deforestation in the Amazon and plowing-under of Brazil’s Cerrado savannah is at least partly attributable to an increased demand in Europe and Asia for beef, chicken, pork, and the soy that feeds the pork and the chicken. In other words a relatively stable or slowly-growing population is causing a spike in land use due to a shift from relatively plant-based diets to a more meat-based diet. A really neat article, The Bacon Uprising, in Fast Company, discusses how China, through a combination of central planning and popular demand, is producing a lot more pork, and tearing up precious habitat in South America to do it.

In a sense the PB&J Campaign is about cutting waste in the agricultural system, in the sense that we produce way more animal products than we need to, and that using animals to convert plant matter to meat, milk, and eggs is less efficient than eating plants directly; eat a PB&J and cut out the middle-man (or middle-cow, middle-chicken, middle-hog, etc.). The result is that you can cut pollution, conserve land and water, and fight global warming with a simple, yummy, plant-based meal.

And then there’s the more-direct food waste. Eating your leftovers is a terrific way to shrink your footprint. Waste less food and you need to buy less food. That’s less food that needs to be produced, less land, water, fossil fuels, and other resources (and pollution) that needs to be emitted. A new FAO report highlights the scale of food waste, pointing out that about a third of the food we produce in the world goes to waste. In developing countries this is from flaws in the food production and transportation systems – inadequate refrigeration, for example. In industrialized countries, we just waste it: uneaten leftovers, the expired milk in the supermarket, the blemished apple no one wants to buy even though it tastes just fine. There are lots of interesting systemic changes we could make to fight the problem in the US (check out the Wasted Food blog for more on the topic), but we all can start by shopping more wisely and eating what we buy. Make a meal out of leftovers before it’s too late!

The PB&J Campaign is all about the meal as the unit of impact, that we can all make a difference (cutting pollution, conserving land and water, fighting global warming) any time we cook dinner. If you pat yourself on the back for taking out the recycling, cycling or taking the bus to work instead of driving, or scewing in a CFL, you can also make a difference by packing a PB&J or picking the bean burrito off the menu instead of the beef or chicken.

Ever since Rushmore I’ve been a Jason Schwartzman fan, so it was a lot of fun to see him (or I guess hear him) narrating a little video about picking a plant-based meal for dinner, in this case veggie tacos.

They presented the choice and the process of making the choice well. The guy doesn’t seem to come to any major revelations or make any grand diet plans; he simply hears a lot of information about the environmental impact of the livestock industry and decides to whip up some veggie tacos.

At the PB&J Campaign we know that saving the planet is serious business, but eating a PB&J is just plain fun. Sure you might be motivated by how much you can shrink your ecological footprint, but unlike some less pleasant environmental actions (does taking out the recycling taste good? Is screwing in a light bulb ever fun – light bulb jokes notwithstanding?), a PB&J or another tasty plant-based meal like falafel (my favorite fast food) can be a lighthearted, enjoyable way to do something good for the planet.

So, how about we unwind with some PB&J music and dance? No, we’re not talking about that infernal bouncing banana. Instead check out Charity and the JAMband with Peanut Butter and Jam! And, now that your feet are moving, check out the Peanut Butter and Jelly Dance Company!

It’s no National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day, but Earth Day is an absolutely fabulous time to try out the yummiest way to cut back on water pollution, conserve land and water, and fight global warming: America’s greatest sandwich, the PB&J!

Earth Day is a great time to try out new ways to help the planet, to see how you can overhaul (or maybe start by tweaking) your life to make it a little greener. Our PB&J Pledge page will give you an idea of what kind of weekly impact you can make shooting for a few (or more) meals lower on the food chain. One sandwich can be a great accomplishment, but imagine how much more accomplished the next time you pack a PB&J, or order the bean burrito, dig into a steaming bowl of oatmeal, finally learn to cook tofu…

I need to give a quick thank you and shoutout to the Florida Virtual School, where on Thursday I got to present a little slide show about eating lower on the food chain. When we also contemplate the great PB&J Day at the Whitewater Middle School in North Carolina, it looks like the environmental impact of a PB&J makes a great environmental educational message for kids. Please don’t hesitate to check in with any of your educational PB&J ideas, and have a fabulous Earth Day!

The PB&J Campaign’s National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day (a celebration of the environmental benefits of eating a plant-based meal, like cutting back on water pollution, conserving land and water, fighting global warming) is in the bag, so now we’re looking forward to that OTHER April environmental holiday, Earth Day!

Earth Day is a lot like New Year’s Day – a time to make a bunch of resolutions about how we’ll live better. What’s an easy resolution that is also great for the planet, and tastes fabulous? You guessed it, a PB&J! Okay, so maybe you can do better than just one – our PB&J Pledge page will give you an idea of what kind of weekly impact you can make shooting for a few (or more) meals lower on the food chain. But even just one meal makes a difference, so commitment or no, you can make a difference any time you’re packing your lunch, cooking dinner, ordering off a menu, or reaching for the oatmeal first thing in the morning.