Junior Rebekah Amstutz and Biology professor Jim Yoder are continuing work this year to spread awareness at EMU as well as in the Harrisonburg community about nitrogen footprints. The term “carbon footprint” is widely used in climate conversations, but nitrogen is fairly new to the common person’s climate action lexicon. Amstutz and Yoder would like this to change.
In 2015, EMU became one of eight universities in the US tracking their nitrogen footprints. This alliance of colleges, called the “Nitrogen Working Group”, also included Brown, UVA, and Colorado State University. The goal of the group of colleges was to begin tracking nitrogen with the same data used to track carbon, adding nitrogen reduction to the conversation of ways to care for the environment without much extra effort.
An underlying intention of this working group is simply to call nitrogen footprints to more people’s attention. “With [nitrogen tracking] being so new,” explained Amstutz, ”there’s no discussion about it, and most schools, most individuals, don’t know about it.” Understandably, there’s a number of questions that need to be answered for nitrogen newbies.
First off, how does nitrogen negatively affect the environment? As a greenhouse gas, reactive nitrogen (nitrogen that has combined with hydrogen or oxygen), contributes to global warming in a number of different ways. Amstutz explained that nitrogen acidifies precipitation, impacts growth in forests, and contributes to eutrophication (when bodies of water have too many nutrients, causing huge blooms of algae). Eutrophication can be particularly detrimental to important local watersheds such as the Chesapeake Bay. Each of these effects, Amstutz explained, are, understandably, “not great for the planet”.
Secondly, how can we, as students, lower our nitrogen footprint? Much of the answer can be found in what we eat. “Food is about 7-10% of our carbon footprint, whereas it is about 75-80% of our nitrogen footprint,” Yoder explained. Because fertilizer contains large amounts of reactive nitrogen, grain-fed meat such as beef, chicken, and pork have particularly high footprints. In fact, at EMU, beef, chicken, and pork make up 54.6% of our nitrogen food footprint while they only make up 15.3% weight of the food we eat. So, choosing a protein at the Caf other than beef, chicken, or pork can easily contribute to a reduction in EMU’s nitrogen footprint. Of course, however, changing eating habits involves both personal decisions by the student body and continued progress in availability of non-meat options. These are both elements that Amstutz and Yoder are hoping their nitrogen footprint work can influence in the future.
For now, Amstutz and Yoder have a couple of goals. As EMU re-considers its climate action plan, the pair find it important to add an appendix about EMU nitrogen footprint reduction goals. Additionally, they are working to begin tracking nitrogen in Harrisonburg city, with hopes to approach the municipality about adding nitrogen into the city’s climate conversations and goals. And lastly, Amstutz and Yoder would like to educate and engage EMU students on the topic of nitrogen reduction as an important and powerful way to take care of our surrounding environment. If you are interested in becoming involved, email rebekah.amstutz@emu.edu or yoderjm@emu.edu about the implications of this project.
