It would be great if we knew how much CO2 products had produced in getting to us. Then maybe we would start thinking about the environmental impact of the products we buy and maybe it would encourage us to think about buying more local things.
Edit: Karin has made a great point in the comments about water use in different growing regimes.
Why not start thinking about this yourself and if you like, add a comment below.
2 Comments
January 4, 2008 at 9:03 pm
Sorry to confuse things further, Joe, but on the Radio 4 programme, ‘Costing the Earth’ today it was also suggested that we should consider the amount of water used to produce each product.
The suggestion seemed to be that it was therefore better to buy British-grown tomatoes than those from drier countries, including Spain. Indeed I have already heard that in parts of Spain the water table has been lowered due to intensive horticultural practices.
It seems we need to think twice about how many tomatoes and cucumbers etc we need, especially out of season.
When you also consider how much food people tend to throw away, buying less generally doesn’t seem like a bad idea at all.
January 5, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Good point Karin. I will attempt to do some work on comparing products based on water usage in later post.