Humans have a major impact on the environment. The choice between vegetarianism and a diet that includes meat also has an impact on the environment. Vegetarianism consists of excluding meat from one's diet. There are six main types of vegetarianism: lacto-ovo, vegan, macrobiotic, fruitarian, raw food diet and natural hygiene diet. The two most common types of vegetarianism are lacto-ovo (eating animal products such as dairy but not meat) and vegan (eating no animal products). Diets that include meat are made possible through animal agriculture, the agricultural system of raising animals for slaughter. Both types of diets, vegetarian and meat-based, include growing edible plants, but meat-based diets also include the additional steps of feeding the crops to livestock and then slaughtering them for meat products. before shipping food products for human consumption. These additional steps require more plants to be grown for livestock to consume (called forage crops), before a final product is produced. Through animal agriculture, large amounts of water and land are used and air pollutants are produced. Although all agriculture is destructive, animal agriculture is far more harmful to the environment than vegetarianism. Water is one of the biggest environmental problems facing the world today. Year after year, new efforts and regulations to conserve and purify water are implemented. The spread of vegetarianism is great for a thirsty world because it uses only a small portion of the water used by animal agriculture. With only eight percent of the world's water used for animal agriculture, this would represent a considerable saving. In the United States of America alone, a third of usable water goes to animal agriculture...... middle of paper ...... 2014. "How much water should you drink every day." WebMD. WebMD, January 25, 2014. Web. April 24, 2014. Messina, Virginie and Mark Messina. The vegetarian way: total health for you and your family. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1996. Print. Steinfeld, Henning et al. The long shadow of livestock: environmental issues and options. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2006. Print. “Veganism and the environment: in figures. » Culinary schools. Culinary schools, nd “vegetarian”. ProCon. ProCon, April 16, 2014. Web. April 23, 2014. Vidal, John. “10 Ways Vegetarianism Can Help Save the Planet.” The Observer July 17, 2010: 52. Print. April 23, 2014. “Water stress will affect 52% of the world's population by 2050.” Environmental leader. Environmental leader, January 14, 2014. Web, April 24, 2014. “Why become vegetarian? ". Vegetarian Times. Cruz Bay Publishing Inc, nd Web, April 23. 2014.