Happy 50th Earth Day, friends! This is one of my favorite days of the year, and since I can’t celebrate with my Sustainability Committee at school, I’ve decided to celebrate here on my blog!

And what is the best accompaniment to any celebration? A charcuterie board, obviously.

For an Earth Day twist, though, this entire board is vegan!

I used Kalamata olives, pimento olives, banana peppers, almonds, craisins and mini bruschetta toasts to decorate the board, but these weren’t the main stars.

For a savory element, I grilled some tofu in sesame oil, drizzled it with soy sauce and sprinkled some sesame seeds on top. With a crispy outside and soft meaty inside, it lends some salty flavor to the board.

As for the cheeses, I made a mini Caprese salad spanning the board with some fresh cherry tomatoes, dried basil, watermelon balsamic and Miyoko’s Vegan Mozz. I also served Miyoko’s vegan cheddar cheese spread with a dash of paprika on top for some smokiness.

This delicious plant-based board was gone within minutes when I split it with my mom and dad.

Eating vegan certainly is a sort of trend nowadays, as people become more concerned about their health, but the environmental impact it has is so important to consider, as is the impact of simply consuming a little less meat.

Here are some fast facts about meat consumption and the environment from culinaryschools.org:

If you cut chicken from your diet for one day a week, it’d be the equivalent of taking 500,000 cars off the road by reducing the CO2 emissions of the livestock industry.

If you ate vegan for one day, your diet for that day would require 3,700 less gallons of water than a meat-eating diet. This because it takes over 2,400 gallons of water just to produce one pound of meat.

You can prevent deforestation by choosing to consume less meat, as the size of about seven football fields are bulldozed per minute to make more farmland for animals.

I’m not sharing these facts to guilt anybody or put a damper on this day, but to spread information we can use to help Mother Earth out a little bit.

I once saw a quote that said something along the lines of that we don’t need one person practicing sustainability perfectly to save the planet, we need a billion people practicing it imperfectly.

It doesn’t matter to me if you’re a vegan who prefers single-use plastic or a meat-eater who recycles everything, just do what you can to make a positive impact on our planet, today and every day, and we’ll be one step closer toward a greener globe for everyone.