Food miles – one pair of shoes at a time

Once upon a time all our needs were met locally. We collected wood for a fire, grew and raised our own food, made our own clothes us using whatever fabric was local to us from hemp to cotton to wool. There are some people who, admirably, manage to do this today, but for most of us it is essential to engage in transactions with third parties to feed and clothe and entertain ourselves and our families.

I have long been involved in both the Slow Food and Local Food movements. I was a founder member of The Durham Local Food Network and believe passionately in supporting local producers, not just of food but of as many other consumables as possible. However how can I reconcile that with a zero waste lifestyle. You would have thought it would be easy, surely the two go together. But they don’t.

Bea Johnson, who genuinely does live the closest to a zero waste lifestyle as anyone I have come across in this journey purchases almost all her food from Whole Foods. This is because she is able to take her own containers (thus no unnecessary plastic or even paper bags for anything from bread to meat) and she can purchase loose goods from pasta to biscuits from the bulk bins. Well therein lies the first problem. However, lovely Whole Foods is, it is essentially an upmarket supermarket (and has prices to match). There is little local about purchasing my oats at Whole Foods even if I could get to one.

So the other option? Durham Food Co-op buys in bulk from a large range of local producers and the balance from Infinity Foods (a co-operative wholesaler of organic and non-organic foods); Durham Farmers’ Market has an excellent selection of local produce; I have access to a good local greengrocer, butcher, fishmonger and cheese merchant. The problem? Most of the food I buy will come prepackaged. I don’t have the option, other than for the vegetables, to use my own containers.

Last year I read about Plastic Free July, unfortunately I heard about it rather late so when I attempted to go plastic free for a week I didn’t have the ongoing tips and support and fell quickly by the wayside. I have signed up for Plastic Free July for this year and am giving myself three months to prepare. I am going to need it. Plastic free is very hard to achieve. The easiest way to go plastic free is to start making as much as possible from scratch. I make my own soft cheese, yoghurt, dog food and dog treats, granola, jams, jellies, wine and cider vinegars, pickles etc. I have asked for a canner for Mothering Sunday with a view to canning our own home grown vegetables. But there is only so much I can do myself and I don’t work full time so I have the time to do all this.

So do I go package (and predominantly plastic) free or do I go local? I know in my heart I will go local. But that will mean compromise. What is more important to you. Zero waste or zero food miles?

So I felt good after the pantry clear out. It is more spacious, I can see what we have and there should be no more duplicate purchases. But it’s not just that is it? It’s not just what I buy but how I buy it.

Bea Johnson uses Whole Foods which is all well and good if you (a) have one or something similar near you and (b) if you are happy to shop in a supermarket. Neither of those are the case for me. It is true that one of the advantages of shopping at the butcher, fishmonger, greengrocer and direct from the producer is that there is going to be less packaging as well as less food miles and a greater knowledge of the provenance of the food itself. But packaging there is, and sometimes quite a lot.

Then what about the dry goods and toiletries? I can buy in bulk from Suma but refilling of existing containers is impossible if you are buying mail order. I believe one of the local farm shops allows refilling of bottles of washing liquid etc. But I live in the countryside and if I have to drive some distance to four or five different locations to do my shopping my carbon footprint is growing from fuel use as fast as it is shrinking from waste reduction.

I feel I almost need to create a criteria triangle with the most important at the bottom. In no particular order they are, I think:

local
ethical
low/zero packaging
low/zero additive
purchased as close to source as possible and not from supermarket

We have just finished putting the paper edition of The Durham Local Food Directory together. Ignoring for a moment the apparent irony of having a paper directory as well as an online one (there is a good reason and we did think long and hard but that is for another post). It has not passed me by that it is somewhat ironic for one of the founder members of Durham Local Food to be in a quandry. But the point is that it is about more than food it’s about clothes, books, furnishing, garden equipment, paint, loo roll, cutlery it’s about every single thing that comes over my threshold.

It seemed at first rather overwhelming, then it became exciting. A challege. Just how much of a difference can I make. The risk is that I will try to do it all at once. That is my usual MO and tends to lead to failure and abdonment. I need to take one area at a time. I am tempted to start with food, but I am already fairly food aware. I need to tackle something that I have overlooked in the past. Something close to my heart, something that will make me sit up and rethink. I will start with reading matter.

books
magazines
newspapers
flyers
business cards
print outs for Messy Church/Sunday School
advertising
office paperwork
cards and letters
photograph albums (I write in mine so I think that counts)
journals

We read quite a lot. Much more than I realised. I don’t want to stop reading but can I change the way I do it? Task for this week. The written word.

How do I consume the written word? Can I do so in a less wasteful manner?

Tag: Food miles

zero waste vs zero food miles

the written word