The impact of our choices
Eat Local
Where does your food come from?
We all need to eat, and most of us do so every day, food is a great starting point to look at how our choices can help create a more connected, sustainable society.
There's huge waste in the system shipping food back and forth around the world in strange ways, sometimes ridiculous: fish caught in Norway, sent to China to be processed, then shipped back to Norway again for sale; or pears grown in Argentina, packed in Thailand, and then sold in the United States. And a lot of choices that seem redundant, too: why do stores in California need to sell fresh apples all the way from New Zealand, when California is one of the biggest apple-growing regions in the world? Also, this clearly isn't an issue of seasonality when the apples from opposite sides of the planet are sitting side-by-side on the shelf.
Here are some simple ways to get started with more local approaches to food.
1. Get a regular veggie box from a local farm . These are a great way to get started with understanding what's happening in your region and supporting your neighbours.
2.Volunteer with a nearby community garden - particularly if you live in a city, where it can be harder to access land, community gardens often offer a way to get involved to learn about gardening and share in the proceeds.
3.Grow your own food - if you have some time and the resources to do so, experimenting with your own garden can be fun and has all kinds of benefits. Indoor gardens are great too!
4.Support businesses that emphasise locally sourced foods, like small stores or cafes, instead of large supermarkets which tend to be less discriminating in their sourcing.
5. Challenge yourself to read the back of the package when shopping, and think about if you really need this thing from the other side of the world. There's no shame in making yourself feel good sometimes by denying that treat when it's doing good for the world too!
Moving towards a model that is community-centered instead of profit-centered is something we need to do. It's important for there to be a significant shift, but it doesn't need to be all-or-nothing, and we shouldn't let perfectionism prevent us from getting more involved and interested in how our choices affect the planet.