University of Melbourne researchers have helped create the first tool to calculate the ‘nitrogen footprint’ of an organisation. Nitrogen has human and environmental health costs in the hundreds of billions of dollars and is a significant challenge to the sustainability of our society. One of the most well-known is the nitrogen run-off from agriculture in Queensland, resulting in damage to the Great Barrier Reef. At 47kg of nitrogen per person each year, Australia is far ahead of the US (28 kg of nitrogen per person per year), the second on the leader board of per capita reactive nitrogen emissions driven largely by a diet rich in animal protein and high level of coal use for energy. The authors note that nitrogen pollution is often disguised as other global change issues, such as climate change, which nitrous oxides and nitrogen oxides contribute to, or harmful particulate matter 2.5, which ammonia gas contributes to. They found that the University of Melbourne has a nitrogen footprint of 139 tonnes of nitrogen, with three factors playing dominant roles: food (37 per cent), energy use (32 per cent) and transport (28 per cent).
— source University of Melbourne | Jul 16, 2018