What do you do to lower your food carbon foot print?

[taxlady]

Do any of you try to cut the carbon foot print of your food?
Do you try to cut the amount of food waste?
Do you try to cut the amount of packaging waste?

 

[taxlady]

I try to buy mostly local food, that hasn't travelled very far.

I have started getting a weekly box from a place called Lufa Farms. They grow a lot of the produce in rooftop greenhouses, in town. They source meat and other groceries from local farmers and producers. They use very few plastic bags and the ones they do use are compostable. The box I get my groceries in goes back the next week. I think this must cut down a lot of the carbon footprint. They even deliver using electric vehicles. Electricity here is very low carbon because it's hydroelectric.

 

[caseydog]

I live on the North Texas prairie. There are corn fields and cattle all around. But, the corn is feed corn -- not edible for humans. The beef I buy is probably mostly from Texas. But, a good portion of that beef is finished in feed lots, which are not "green" at all.

We have a local farmer's market in summer months, but most of the produce there is the same stuff you can find at Kroger. People go there and buy stuff thinking they are getting locally grown produce, but unless you ask... and ask... and ask again, you won't know that it came from another part of the country, or even from another part of the world. Texas is a red state, so sellers don't have to tell you the truth. Caveat emptor.

I try not to waste food. But, I sometimes get a little too enthusiastic when I find good looking produce. For what it's worth, it hurts me to throw away food. I don't compost, because we have a field rat problem where I live. I live in a suburb of Dallas with 160,000 people, but there is a 3,000 acre working ranch a couple blocks from my house.

So, I do what I can, but I don't go to extremes. IMO, a whole lot of people doing just a little if better than a very few doing a lot.

CD

 

[larry_stewart]

Between composting and feeding left overs to the chickens, I have little to no food waste at all.

Do use reusable bags at markets and recycle as well.

 

[pepperhead212]

I also have very little food waste, as I compost all of my waste, except for meats, and what meat waste I have, I try to extract all that I can from it, making some broth. I try to buy local, and also in bulk, so there is less packaging. I reuse as much as I can of all those vacuum seal bags I use, except for meat bags. And once the warm weather starts, a very large amount of my produce comes from my garden, which is all organic, and is where all that compost goes! And I save as much water as I can by setting up a drip irrigation system to water almost everything. One rain barrel I use to catch the water from the rear roofs, and use that only for my herb bed - not enough for much more. That drip irrigation system not only saves water, but a LOT of work, later in the season, though setting it up takes time early on. Another thing to help with the water, is recycling cardboard, which I use laid out as sort of a mulch, which, by the end of the season it has broken down, and I add it to the compost as the carbon component. All of last year's leaves will also be used as mulch, and that just gets turned in at the end of the season, when next year's leaves are falling! The worms love all that stuff, and that's how I can always tell that the soil is doing geat - all those worms! Plus, a lot of veggies, too.

 

[pepperhead212]

I just thought of something that I do with those plastic mushroom containers, and similar containers. While they can be put into recycling, I use a bunch of them to start seeds in. I have a bunch of things in them right now. Eventually, they will go into recycling, but that's a lot less of those plastic seedling pots getting used.

 

[Aunt Bea]

I try to be frugal and frugal is usually low carbon.

I buy local when I can, select unwrapped produce, eliminate food waste, and recycle.

I'm always a little bit leery of places like Lufa Farms. I have to wonder if building hi-tech agribusiness style greenhouses, buying state of the art electric cars and using slick packaging materials is really a green/low carbon option. I'm not putting them down I'm just a jaded, skeptical, old hippie at heart.

"It's not that easy bein' green..."- Kermit the Frog

 

[taxlady]

I try to be frugal and frugal is usually low carbon.

I buy local when I can, select unwrapped produce, eliminate food waste, and recycle.

I'm always a little bit leery of places like Lufa Farms. I have to wonder if building hi-tech agribusiness style greenhouses, buying state of the art electric cars and using slick packaging materials is really a green/low carbon option. I'm not putting them down I'm just a jaded, skeptical, old hippie at heart.

"It's not that easy bein' green..."- Kermit the Frog

No "slick packaging" unless you mean the compostable plastic bags. As I mentioned, they don't use many. And while electric cars may not be completely green, they are much greener than internal combustion vehicles. Did you think farmers weren't using green houses? I don't see the problem with having them in the city on rooftops. I'm skeptical and an old "hippie" too.

 

[CraigC]

One word, Beano.

 

[dragnlaw]

One word, Beano.

for who? the cows?

I try where I can but it grates my nerves to buy in small quantities I'm paying more for either the product or the packaging.

If I buy in large quantities, more than likely half will go bad and be thrown out. Yes, it goes in the compost but I think probably it would be better off in someones tummy.

 

[GotGarlic]

I try to minimize my use of disposables when cooking and minimize the number of trips to the grocery store. There's a greenhouse operation near us that would deliver, but the amounts they were selling were more than we would eat; I've thought about a farmers market CSA, but what you get is unpredictable and there are lots of veggies I can't eat for medical reasons.

So we raise a garden and grow a lot of the veggies we eat during the summer and fall, we buy some from the farmers market, and we have two rain barrels. I have over a dozen canvas bags that DH collected attending conferences over the years, and I reuse the thin plastic produce bags from the store. We compost most of what we don't get around to eating and we recycle.

So yeah, we try.

 

[Oldvine]

I'm not sure if I fully understand "food carbon foot print". I live with vineyards on two sides of me and orchards on the other two, with a road headed to civilization between me and one orchard. Not far is the company that picks, pack, chill, and ships everything pickable and packable....grapes, cherries, peaches, asparagus, oranges, you name it, if it grows in the this big valley they handle it. It takes a lot of carbon producing machines and packaging to get that stuff to market. So I can't even start to decide what my carbon foot print might be except to do my best after I pick it off the shelf in the grocery store to use what I buy or at least recycle it.

 

[dragnlaw]

I am so ashamed for my country.

Tonight I just watched a program that explained why Indonesia would declare war on Canada if we don't take back all the disgusting filthy garbage we sent to them under the guise of recyclable plastics.

 

[Cooking Goddess]

Do you try to cut the carbon foot print of your food?

I'm pretty good about buying what I'll use and using what I buy. If I want to make my footprint smaller, we'll have to eat less food. (This would not be a bad thing.) I suppose I could compost, but our yard really doesn't have a good spot for a compost bin (which we had in our previous two homes) and thanks to a lousy neighbor we already have more field mice than I want to see. At least they aren't like cd's rats, but they are villains when it comes to carrying ticks. *shudder*

Do you try to cut the amount of food waste?

I was raised by a Mom who's mantra was "waste not, want not". IF there is something that gets lost in the back of the fridge, I'm pretty mad when I find it and have to toss.

Do you try to cut the amount of packaging waste?

I buy loose items when I can, and reuse the plastic bags I need from buying produce. We don't buy bottled water, so there's that. I've got recycling down pat since we've been doing it since about 1987, when it was a one-month project for our Cub Scout son. I figured why stop after one month and have been doing it ever since.

 

[caseydog]

Something else I do is use these IKEA insulated reusable grocery bags, instead of those plastic throw-aways.

https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/90148605/

They are study, and keep my food cool on the drive home. Besides, those flimsy plastic bags should be banned. I have picked hundreds of them out of my trees and gardens on a windy day. I had a Walmart bag 40-feet up in my front tree for about three months.

CD