By Amy Mazurek, sustainability student
IU South Bend
There are several ways to be a consumer making healthy lifestyle choices while still being a responsible consumer. Three of the biggest are purchasing organic, buying local, and purchasing food that is fair trade.
Buying local & watching carbon footprints
When buying groceries, produce, or even clothing, are you aware of where the items were produced and how far they traveled to get to you? Or how large was the carbon footprint in order to make the items in your cart available to you? A carbon footprint is “the total amount of greenhouse gases produced to directly and indirectly support human activities, usually expressed in equivalent tons of carbon dioxide (CO2).” (Petersen) An apple orchard in Traverse City, Michigan may grow natural, organic apples but then ship them to California to sell in plastic bags. While organic, they have created a much larger carbon footprint than selling them locally on a stand where the consumer brings their own bags to fill.
What can we do to create a smaller footprint on our earth? First, we can eat locally. Find our where those apples are coming from! The closer the orchard is to your home, the less gas used to transport it, the less carbon monoxide put into the air to transport it, and the better for our environment. “Local food often costs less than the equivalent food bought on the international market or from a supermarket, because transportation costs are lower and there are fewer middlemen.” (Halweil) Check out local farmer’s markets, produce co-ops, and even local grocery stores for locally grown foods. And while you’re shopping, remember to bring your reusable bags. Not only can we save the 12 million barrels of oil used to make the plastic bags, but reusable bags generally hold more and are easier to carry.
Next, eat lower on the food chain. The more energy used to create the food, the harsher it is for the earth. “Since 80% of the grains go to feeding livestock, the amount of energy used indirectly to support our diet of double bacon cheeseburgers is staggering. And, if you do eat meat, then try to avoid animals grown in feedlots or factory pens. They take far more energy calories to raise than free-range, grassfed critters, which have only about a third of the embedded energy.” (Starr) In other words, there isn’t just one ‘green’ way to go! We can all do what fits our lifestyles, then hopefully adjust our lifestyles step by step as we learn.
Leave a Reply