Run For One Planet Blog

By Chris Tilley

1. Eat Local and Organic

Especially for heavier items that take extra time, energy, and carbon emissions to haul around the world, purchase foods that are produced locally and organically. A well-balanced diet of vegetables and fruits can easily serve you over 20 different delicious pesticides each day! And before you even take your first bite, all those pesticides are affecting the soil, the water, the farm workers, the wildlife, and the planet. So each time you buy organic food, you help break that cycle.

Where does your food come from? That question can be as disturbing as ‘What is in my hot dog?’ Our food comes from all over the world and it comes here by ship, truck, plane and train. All of those produce carbon dioxide by burning fossil fuels. A quick look through my groceries revealed:

• Green peppers – California
• Carrots – California
• Potatoes – Idaho
• Canned pineapple – Thailand
• Rice – India

A lot of other items were labeled as ‘Made in Canada’ but that can be misleading. All that ‘Made in Canada’ means is that 51% of the production cost occurred in Canada. The ingredients can come from anywhere. (source) One report compared a selection of foods bought at a local farmers market and the equivalent bought at a supermarket. The food that they bought was roughly one dinner’s worth. The local food had a carbon dioxide content of 0.118 kilograms, the imported foods 11.866 kilograms.(source) Now they had New Zealand Lamb Chops that contributed over 8 kilograms of carbon dioxide. That high number is because they were flown in. Removing the lamb brings the imports down to 3.5 kilogram of carbon dioxide. So taking that out to a year and we end up with the imported food costing 1.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Using their calculations the items in my groceries worked out to:

• Green peppers – California – ¼ Kg carbon dioxide per Kg purchased
• Carrots – California – ¼ Kg carbon dioxide per Kg purchased
• Potatoes – Idaho– 1/8 Kg carbon dioxide per Kg purchased
• Canned pineapple – Thailand – 1/2 Kg carbon dioxide per Kg purchased
• Rice – India – 1/2 Kg carbon dioxide per Kg purchased

Local food is also fresher and allowed to ripen naturally. Most TV Chefs I’ve watched say to buy local fresh products. Local Harvest website has a searchable map of local food producers.(source) I did a quick search for Boston, MA, one of the stops on the route, and the first one to come up was City Feed and Supply. It’s a deli that partners with local farmers. Unfortunately the Loacla Harvest map doesn’t extend to Canada but still useful for those it does cover and for Matt and Steph as they need food along the way. Local food is also quite often cheaper direct from the farm and means more money goes directly to the farmer.

Eating one meal locally for a year

1 Action

• 1.2 Tonnes of carbon dioxide which would take 55 trees one year to absorb.

1 million Actions

• 1.2 million Tonnes of carbon dioxide which would take 55 million trees one year to absorb.