By Kris Cameron, Confluence Rotary Club, Wenatchee, WA, USA
Project Drawdown lists plant-rich diets as the climate solution with the second highest global potential to reduce heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. The ESRAG Plant Rich Diet Task Force has recently finished converting their original 15 Day Plant-Rich Diet Challenge, launched live in 2021, into a do-it-yourself project available from their webpage. Anyone can sign up to take the Challenge as an individual or as an organizer for a club or group. Since the individual option has been available, 30 people from around the world have signed up to take The Challenge at their own pace. Half of those individuals did so in response to a notice shared in the Chelan County (WA) Public Utility District newsletter that is sent electronically to all of their customers.
Lon Penna, Secretary of Niscayuna Rotary, emailed me in March that he had signed up and was sharing the news of the Plant-Rich Diet with his club, District Governor, DG Elect, and DG Nominee. “Like the scientists at Project Drawdown, I am OPTIMISTIC that the human spirit will do what we need to do, and how easy is it to modify our diet! Someone said at last night’s ESRAG meeting that if we all ate one less hamburger a week, it would be like taking ten million cars off the road. Thank you so much!” he wrote.
Nine individuals have signed up to organize a Challenge for a club or group. For example, the Chelan-Douglas Health District and Confluence Health (based in Wenatchee, WA) have sponsored The Challenge for their employees as part of their employee wellness programs. Fellow Rotarians have registered to host Challenges for their clubs in Singapore, Minnesota, California, and New York. The Rotary clubs of Canmore, Alberta, Canada, St.Thomas East Eco of the U.S. Virgin Islands, and London Hyde Park, Ontario, Canada, have challenged one another to an Earth Day Plant-Rich Challenge and have already registered over 150 participants. If you would like to join them and improve your personal and planetary health, you can sign up HERE.
After discovering the Plant-Rich Diet, the Boise Metro Rotary Club in Idaho, USA switched their regular meeting venue to a restaurant that makes grains, legumes, fruit or vegetables the main course, with meat as an optional side dish. Club member Jeff Larsen shared the news of their action with Rotary’s Projects team, together with this luscious photo of a recent club menu offering.