Best Practices: Choose Fresh Produce for the Carbon Conscious
/I’m prepping for another talk on reducing toxicity and ecological footprint at home. And while I jump at the chance to wax on about the particulars of healthier building materials, the realm of toxicity at home can be pretty mind bending (and sometimes scary). When it comes to construction on the homefront, change is slow, expensive and messy, and it takes lots of preparation and planning. So it’s also important to zoom out and include in the discussion those everyday considerations that can affect cumulative impactful change with immediacy, little investment and minimal disruption to daily life. Case in point: Educated choices in the produce aisle can lower your carbon footprint drastically. World Wildlife Fund scientist Chris Weber says, “Food choice is one of the easiest things for people to change, because when you compare it to something like your transportation choices or home energy use, food is something you choose every day.”
That means emphasizing plant-based choices in your diet over meats, cheeses and highly-processed foods. It also means finding a good balance between organic farming practices and locally-sourced produce that doesn’t require lots of time on a truck (or a plane!) or in a heated greenhouse. In her recent NYT article on the subject, Jillian Mock summarizes the wisdom of several experts on the subject:
Avoid delicate off-season produce like South American blackberries or asparagus in the winter—they are highly perishable and require air travel and cold storage (two significant carbon loads) to stay fresh in our American produce aisles. “While transportation accounts for only about 6 percent of food-related greenhouse gas emissions globally, not all modes of travel are created equal. Anything that travels by air, like fresh blackberries or asparagus from South America, is going to burn a lot of carbon.”
Prefer produce that does not require the use of heated greenhouses. When shopping for tomatoes in a mid-Atlantic grocery store, choose the varieties that have been trucked in from warmer climes like California or Mexico over Canadian hothouse varieties. “Even having been shipped farther, those southern tomatoes probably have a smaller footprint than the hothouse variety because it takes a lot of energy to keep a greenhouse warm during the cold months.”
Prioritize root vegetables, winter squash and hearty greens—they have long shelf lives and can last well into the winter even after having been grown and harvested locally over the summer. “And many greens can thrive under covered, unheated greenhouse conditions, growing fresh well into the colder months without the need for carbon-intensive heating.”