Environmental Leader

Beginning on Earth Day, national food service contractor Bon Appetit Management Company, which serves 80 million meals a year, will reduce its carbon emissions by 25 percent, The Boston Globe reports.

Here’s what’s on the menu: The company is cutting beef and cheese purchases, will only buy meats raised in North America, will stop purchasing any air freighted seafood and buy only local or frozen-at-sea fish, will push for composting and less food waste; and will stop using any imported water.

“Taking water out of Italy and drinking it in Massachusetts does more harm than good,” Adil Najam, director of Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, says in the article. “When we consume anything, we need to look at the full ecological impact.”

The plan is an extension of a program launched on Earth Day 2007.

The idea that “only local is good” has come under attack recently. On a similar topic, a study from the University of Alberta found that organic food may not be any better for the planet.

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