How large are mine? Hopefully much, much smaller than my shoe size. For the most part, I’m on Mother Nature’s A List. I recycle, use canvas grocery bags, leave my car at home when feasible, use methods from Better Basics for the Home – Simple Solutions for Less Toxic Living by Annie Berthold-Bond (Three River Press) and generally, eat green.
Eating green is “one of the most important tools you have for slowing global warming. With food, what's good for your pocketbook is bad for the earth.” Big Food, the “huge companies that grow, process, and ship most of the food that most of us eat don't have to pay what their business operations actually cost. [Like] the nitrogen that their chemical fertilizers pour into our waterways or for the carbon dioxide that's spewed out when our food is shipped thousands of miles.” (1)
“For every mile traveled by a huge tractor-trailer to haul our food, according to a University of Iowa study, 3.74 pounds of carbon dioxide are emitted. So shipping, say, one load of strawberries from California to New York puts more than 11,000 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere - more than 4 ounces of carbon dioxide for each 12-ounce box of strawberries.” (1)
“Perishable foods are increasingly being flown long distances in refrigerated cargo planes. Those transportation costs are tax-deductible for the big food corporations, meaning that taxpayers get the bill. So, as we look harder at how we're contributing to global warming these food miles are surfacing as one of the big problems.” (1)
“Growing food organically does cut down on pollution, including the pollution caused by the manufacture of all those chemical fertilizers. But as its popularity grows, organic food is increasingly moving into the commercial food distribution system which means it's shipped as far as any other kind of food.” (1)
(1) The Cost of Eating Green by Ann Monroe www.msnmoney.com, December 17, 2007
