Philosophical Vegan Forum

Hello, brilliant intellectuals of the Philosophical Vegan forum!

I am currently a graduate student studying geology, and one of my classes (actually an environmental science class; not geology) is called "Hazardous Waste Management".

I will need to write a research paper as a project for this class, with the topic being any kind of issue/site/event which involves hazardous waste. For now, I just need to choose a topic.

I came here for ideas because I would like to choose a topic which involves animal agriculture, since I have long been wanting to improve my knowledge of the environmental problems of animal agriculture. What sort of environmental issues within animal agriculture would you most strongly recommend that I research (so long as these issues involve some kind of handling/disposal of hazardous waste)?

I'm thinking of the enormous shit pools that result from factory farming. I'd maybe like to research how this filth gets disposed of, and the adverse effects that it has upon the surrounding environment and people's health.

Any input is welcome! Thank you.

P.S. For anyone who's interested in my project, I will update my progress here and leave it open to suggestions for improvement.

Methane might be a better, and more comprehensive study. Shit lagoons won't tell you all that much, and it's much harder to control methane waste, since it's a gas.

Methane! Yes. I suppose I could research how much methane is produced per animal by animal agiculture, how much of an effect it has on global warming, and methods of curbing these emissions. Anything more that you'd like me to consider?

Methane comes from many sources, including the growing of the food (and production of inputs), the anaerobic fermentation of the silage, the digestion by the animals, their feces after digestion (including fermentation and fertilizing using it), the bodies of the animals and slaughter byproducts breaking down when wasted.

There are a lot of things through the process to look into.

You could then compare this to a plant based diet, and look at methane production there, which would be the prime suggestion for mitigation. And look at other methods, like the implausible suggestion to capture methane through all stages, where it can be captured, and if it is in practice ever captured and how often, and what the costs are for that.

brimstoneSalad wrote:You could then compare this to a plant based diet, and look at methane production there, which would be the prime suggestion for mitigation. And look at other methods, like the implausible suggestion to capture methane through all stages, where it can be captured, and if it is in practice ever captured and how often, and what the costs are for that.

Good ideas, definitely. One obvious advantage here of the plant based diet is the lesser quantity of overall resource usage. For whatever aspects of animal agriculture there are that cause methane emissions, which are also present in plant agriculture, the latter would surely be lesser than the former.

You seem to know a great deal about this. Any specific research papers that you suggest I read?

So I've been thinking... are you familiar with the "Hierarchy of Hazardous Waste Management"? Reduce > Reuse > Recycle > Treatment > Disposal. Step 1 is "reduce", so if some methane-emitting resource-usage present in animal agriculture is also present in plant agriculture, but to a far lesser degree, then that right there is a reason to advocate plant-based diets. For reasons relevant to the topic of study of this HWM class.

Lightningman_42 wrote:One obvious advantage here of the plant based diet is the lesser quantity of overall resource usage.

Yes, that's a very safe assumption, but the magnitude here would be pretty important to place the harm relative to others. People can imagine it's only slightly more harmful, and that's a problem.

Lightningman_42 wrote:You seem to know a great deal about this. Any specific research papers that you suggest I read?

I would just reference industry data, and then look for emissions studied from each activity to match up to the numbers they give in terms of their 'best practice' recommendations.
It may be tricky to find numbers on some things, depending on how well they've been researched.

Lightningman_42 wrote:Step 1 is "reduce", so if some methane-emitting resource-usage present in animal agriculture is also present in plant agriculture, but to a far lesser degree, then that right there is a reason to advocate plant-based diets.

Definitely. It's also worth looking into the logistics of treatment. Methane can be turned into CO2 and water, but it's unlikely to be practical at the concentrations we're dealing with from cow burps.