1 Minute Green-overs
It can take less than a minute to do something green. Try some of these
simple solutions to be on the path to a greener lifestyle.
* If everyone in the U.S. said "no thanks" to ATM receipts, it would
save a roll of paper so long it could circle the equator fifteen times.
2
* Change light bulbs from traditional incandescent to compact
fluorescent light bulbs. If every American did, it would reduce
greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of nearly 800,000 cars. 3
* Turn off the car instead of idling when waiting in a carpool lane for
the kids at school. When a car idles for more than 30 seconds, it's
actually using more gas, therefore putting more greenhouse gas
pollution into the air then if it was turned off. 4
* If every household in the U.S. replaced just one roll of virgin fiber
paper towels (70 sheets) with 100% recycled ones, we could save 544,000
trees. 5
Buy Local
The concept of buying local is simply to buy food (or any good or
service) produced, grown, or raised as close to your home as possible.
With industrialization, our food is now grown and processed in fewer
and fewer locations, meaning it has to travel further to reach the
average consumer’s refrigerator. Although this method of production is
considered efficient and economically profitable for large agribusiness
corporations, it is harmful to the environment, consumers and rural
communities.
Food Miles, Resources and the Environment
"Food miles" refer to the distance a food item travels from the farm to
your home. The food miles for items you buy in the grocery store tend
to be 27 times higher than the food miles for goods bought from local
sources.i
In the U.S., the average grocery store’s produce travels nearly 1,500
miles between the farm where it was grown and your refrigerator.ii
About 40% of our fruit is produced overseas and, even though broccoli
is likely grown within 20 miles of the average American’s house, the
broccoli we buy at the supermarket travels an average 1,800 miles to
get there. Notably, 9% of our red meat comes from foreign countries,
including locations as far away as Australia and New Zealand.iii
So how does our food travel from farm field to grocery store? It’s
trucked across the country, hauled in freighter ships over oceans, and
flown around the world.
Why Buy Local?
Most produce in the US is picked 4 to 7 days before being placed on
supermarket shelves, and is shipped for an average of 1500 miles before
being sold. And this is when taking into account only US grown
products! Those distances are substantially longer when we take into
consideration produce imported from Mexico, Asia, Canada, South
America, and other places.
We can only afford to do this now because of the artificially low
energy prices that we currently enjoy, and by externalizing the
environmental costs of such a wasteful food system. We do this also to
the detriment of small farmers by subsidizing large scale,
agribusiness-oriented agriculture with government handouts and
artificially cheap energy.
Cheap oil will not last forever though. World oil production has
already peaked, according to some estimates, and while demand for
energy continues to grow, supply will soon start dwindling, sending the
price of energy through the roof. We'll be forced then to reevaluate
our food systems and place more emphasis on energy efficient
agricultural methods, like smaller-scale organic agriculture, and on
local production wherever possible.
Cheap energy and agricultural subsidies facilitate a type of
agriculture that is destroying and polluting our soils and water,
weakening our communities, and concentrating wealth and power into a
few hands. It is also threatening the security of our food systems, as
demonstrated by the continued e-Coli, GMO-contamination, and other
health scares that are often seen nowadays on the news.
These large-scale, agribusiness-oriented food systems are bound to fail
on the long term, sunk by their own unsustainability. But why wait
until we're forced by circumstance to abandon our destructive patterns
of consumption? We can start now by buying locally grown food whenever
possible. By doing so you'll be helping preserve the environment, and
you'll be strengthening your community by investing your food dollar
close to home. Only 18 cents of every dollar, when buying at a large
supermarket, go to the grower. 82 cents go to various unnecessary
middlemen. Cut them out of the picture and buy your food directly from
your local farmer.
