Easy Food Tips
The process of producing food and getting it to the stores uses a surprisingly large amount of non-renewable resources. The growing crops for example uses oil-based fertilisers and fuel hungry agricultural machinery to enable farming on a massive scale. The food then needs to be transported to factories that use oil to run machinery and oil-based plastics for packaging. The products are then transported to the stores using non-renewable fuels such as diesel or petrol. Then of course you need to consider that most food is purchased in supermarkets that most consumers drive to in their oil hungry cars and then drive home again.
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Don't Waste Food
If you don't eat all your food before it goes off buy less food next time you go shopping. If you often have food left on your plate, you should prepare smaller portions.
Bring your own Shopping Bags
This shopping bag cost £0.40 and is ideal; its light, bigger than a plastic bag, and doesnt break nearly as easily. Plus it looks far better.
We use billions of plastic bags (made from fossil fuels) every year. They cause environmental damage both in their production and disposal. Thankfully, many people are now using re-usable bags instead. If you are not one of them, please consider it next time you go shopping and help save the environment.
Buy Locally Produced Food
The less distance food needs to travel before you eat it the less energy is used on transportation so its greener to eat local food or at least food produced in your country.
Eat Less Meat
Cattle produce a very large amount of green house gases so if you eat less red meat then less cattle will be raised for food, and less cattle means less green house gases. 99% of all crops are grown for cattle feed, and 50% of anti-biotics are used by livestock. If we consumed no meat then we would need 99% less agricultural land which would reduce deforestation and our energy consumption would be far less. Eating less meat is one of the most significant things you can do to protect the environment.
Buy Organic Food
Organic food is often more expensive than other foods because it is more expensive to grow food organically, but is far better for the environment. Food that is not grown organically use cheap fertilisers and chemicals that are heavily dependent on oil to produce and can cause a lot of damage to the environment.
Buy Less Excessively Packaged/Multipack Food
Multipacks require far more energy and resources to produce than large single packs of food. For instance a multi-pack of small bottled drinks can use more than twice the plastic and other resources than one or two large bottles containing the same amount of drink.