You don’t have to be a environmental scientist to know that we are having a huge influence on the state of our planet and people are only starting to take action now. Twenty years ago, very few people even thought about where their food, tableware or clothing etc came from. It was a case of what do I want and where do I get it. However, in a struggling economy and a planet suffering all sorts of pollution, we need to think differently about how we live our lives. A healthy approach can start at home by being considerate about something as simple as your next meal.
Local Suppliers. It seems all to easy these days to buy exotic fruit whenever you want it or pick up some foreign spices from the local shop. The fact that products such as these are having to be transported over many hundreds, if not thousands of miles has large ramifications. Not only does the transport release vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, due to burning fuel and having to use a food and wine fridge to keep the produce chilled all the way, but also local food suppliers struggle to compete with low foreign costs. If you want to see the important businesses in your local area survive for years to come then make sure you use them whenever you can.
Fight Packaging. You only have to take a walk down one of the isles to see how much food packaging is wasted making products look pretty. A single cake might be singly wrapped, inside a little box with a plastic place-holder, which is cloaked in cellophane and transported within a cardboard box, with the other cake boxes. It is often the case that such packaging is completely redundant, so do your bit and try to buy loose or sensibly wrapped goods.
Green Accessories. More than just the food you buy can influence the planet when you eat. Everything from the cutlery you use to the little wine gifts you purchase for other people can have a knock on effect and so deserve consideration. Ask yourself where this ware has come from, is it something that could be made from a more sustainable textile, and is this a disposable product when I could be purchasing a reclaimable one? A good example of this is chopsticks as the disposable kind accounts for acres of lost rain forest every day.