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Barren larder, heavy heart
Rebecca Front, Guardian
Trying to reduce the food miles involved in my weekly shopping is a fraught process
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You know that old joke, I’m sure. The one with the husband talking about his marriage, and explaining how he makes all the big decisions – whether they approve of the government’s foreign policy, that sort of thing – while his wife deals with the trivial stuff like what the children should have for dinner. Perfectly amusing in an old-hat, patriarchal “let’s give the little woman some credit” sort of way. It’s just that I’m finding, increasingly, that the two types of decision have merged into one. Shopping has become a socio-political process, and neither I nor my husband is equipped to make the decisions.
It started with my new year’s resolution …. to reduce substantially the air miles involved in the weekly shopping. Yes, I reasoned, it’s nice to have blueberries in winter, and few people appreciate a seedless grape more than I, but I cannot justify someone chartering a 747 to Chile and back just to brighten up my muesli. I can’t stop it single-handedly, but if we all use what little power we have as consumers, maybe it will make a difference.
…I finished my shopping trip with sore feet, a somewhat barren trolley, and a sense of doom about the whole enterprise. I’ll stick with it, because I’m too bloody-minded to give in. But it struck me that only people who are pretty well-off, reasonably informed, versatile enough to cook whatever is in season, and with hours to spare on their shopping each week, could possibly make a good fist of this. Box schemes are a boon, but you need to be a little more adventurous than many people are; and farmers’ markets are great, but they are rare and not cheap.
If our shopping habits are to adapt then it will have to come from government pressure on food retailers, not from consumer pressure. So I start the year with a sparse larder and a heavy heart. On the plus side, I’ve made a lovely winter-vegetable soup, and the pencils are all in the right place.
(10 Jan 2007)
Anyone who’s tried to eat locally knows the frustration that Rebecca Front amusingly describes. And yet there are some things that can make it easier. For example, realizing that it takes more than a week to change habits that have developed over decades. It takes time to find foods and suppliers. Also, one doesn’t have to buy everything locally all at once – a gradual approach has a greater chance of success.
One thing that Rebecca’s account shows is how drastically the food system in the UK has changed, as supermarkets have driven out small shops and flown-in food has replaced local produce. Twenty years ago we found it easy to find local fish and vegetables in East Anglia, even in winter. I suspect it would be much more difficult now. -BA
Deconstructing Dinner: Bridging Borders Highlights (Audio)
Global Public Media
Between October 7-11, 2006, participants from across North America gathered together in Vancouver for the Bridging Borders Toward Food Security Conference. Hosted by the Vancouver Food Policy Council, the conference was organized by the California-based Community Food Security Coalition and Food Secure Canada, a new Canadian organization.
Deconstructing Dinner is designed to educate listeners on the impacts our food choices have on ourselves, our communities and the planet. The show, hosted by Jon Steinman, is produced at Kootenay Co-op Radio (CJLY) in Nelson, British Columbia, Canada.
(9 Jan 2007)
Stranger Danger! Risks of too much safety?
We’re carless and curious. Do vehicles really protect children?
Alan Thein Durning, The Tyee
[Our yearlong experiment of living car-free for a year] doubled as a way of buying our way out of a state of perpetual fear: fear that we were somehow negligent parents, sending our kids — sometimes alone — into the big, scary world, on foot, on bikes and on city busses. To further combat perpetual worry, we also began to examine the roots of our fears and to question their legitimacy.
In the age of Amber Alerts, JonBenet, Polly Klaas, sex-offender housing … most parents don’t ever want their children to lack adult supervision. In today’s fast-paced, activity-filled world, where our lives are as sprawling as our cities, this usually means driving our kids everywhere. Our cars have become armour against “stranger danger.”
In this environment, getting our kids cell phones did buy us peace of mind; we are able to keep track of each other better. (And we can easily afford the phones out of the savings from not owning a car.) But it’s difficult to feel confident that cell phones are enough to replace constant parental chauffeuring, especially when we read terrifying headlines about crime and abduction: “Every 40 seconds in the United States, a child becomes missing or is abducted,” or “Child abduction rates have risen 444 per cent since 1982 and are still rising.”
No wonder there’s a palpable feeling that North America is brimming with dangerous strangers: a pedophile under every rock, a child snatcher behind every tree. Parents feel it, and so do kids.
But on closer examination, it turns out parents’ perception of “stranger danger” is catastrophically inflated. Our neighbourhoods are safer and friendlier than the evening news would lead us to believe. And the lock-down security regime that’s resulted may do more harm than good.
When we looked closer at the numbers, it was clear that keeping our kids “safe” indoors increased the risk of dangers that may be of greater magnitude than those associated with “setting them free.” When they find themselves cooped up at home, more kids hurt themselves by playing with unlocked firearms; sampling from the medicine or liquor cabinet; or chatting with online pedophiles. Most devastating is the increased risk of obesity when our kids are sedentary — and the health and psychological havoc it wreaks over a lifetime.
It’s important to measure what really matters. Spend some time digging behind the statistics that terrify most parents and you’ll quickly learn that most “missing or abducted children” are runaways. Many kids who run away do so repeatedly, as many as 40 times a year. Every one of those incidents counts in the “every 40 seconds” statistic above. Most other missing kids have simply forgotten to inform a parent or care provider of their whereabouts and turn up again, typically within an hour or two, at a friend or neighbour’s house — if reported to the police, those are recorded as abductions too.
(9 Jan 2007)
Can We Create A World Without Waste?
Andi McDaniel, Conscious Choice via AlterNet
A new movement is working to make manufacturers more accountable by pushing them to stop producing anything that can’t be resold, recycled or reused.
…But in addition to getting the word out about these tried and true solutions, a new movement is taking a more holistic approach. Rather than focusing solely on what to do with existing waste, the “Zero Waste” movement looks at a product’s entire life cycle — and redirects the conversation toward usable options for every step along the way. The ultimate goal is to eliminate waste as a concept entirely — a lofty aspiration indeed. But Zero Wasters say loftiness is part of the point — after all, creating a trash-free world is going to take nothing short of revolution.
The idea behind Zero Waste is simple: basically, nothing with a second use should be thrown away. And if something doesn’t have a second use, it shouldn’t exist. The Berkeley Ecology Center, a West Coast leader in the Zero Waste movement, puts it this way, “If it can’t be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled or composted, then it should be restricted, redesigned or removed from production.”
While Zero Waste depends on careful attention to what we do or don’t toss in our home trashcans, its ultimate task is to take a bigger view of how waste is handled on an industrial level. According to the Grassroots Recycling Network (GRRN), an international Zero Waste advocacy group, “The goal applies to the whole production and consumption cycle — raw material extraction, product design, production processes, how products are sold and delivered, how consumers choose products and more.”
It’s one thing to tell consumers to stop throwing banana peels in the trash bin, but quite a larger task to convince industry to adopt Zero Waste.
(9 Jan 2007)
Finding the Green in Building Renovation
Lisa Chamberlain, NY Times
It is a rare announcement for a new commercial office building these days that does not trumpet the new structure’s “green” features. In fact, nearly 5,000 buildings across the country, 90 percent of them new construction, are awaiting evaluation by the United States Green Building Council.
The council is the Washington-based nonprofit organization that, in 1998, created the notion that buildings could be certified as environmentally friendly.
The trend, however, has not caught on to the same degree in the renovation of existing buildings. But one developer based in New York is banking on the potential growth of this so-far-overlooked market.
Jonathan F. P. Rose, a third-generation developer who founded the Jonathan Rose Companies in 1989 to marry for-profit development with a socially conscious mission, began the Rose Smart Growth Investment Fund a year ago. The $100 million limited partnership is one of the few environmentally oriented investment funds – perhaps the only one – to focus exclusively on the acquisition of existing properties in locations served by mass transit. The expectation is that the fund will make environmentally conscious improvements to the properties and hold them as long-term investments.
“Over the life of a building, more energy is consumed traveling to and from a building than is used by the building itself,” Mr. Rose said. “So location in urban areas with good mass transit is critical to reducing environmental impact. And when you pick transit-based urban sites, supply is already constrained. So the strategy is to hit a sweet spot of holistic development and economic return.”
(10 Jan 2007)
Peak Moment covers PO solutions
Global Public Media
Peak Moment: The Small-Mart Revolution
Michael Shuman advocates “Going Local,” showing how local businesses are beating global competition and helping to create self-reliant communities. One innovative idea: invest locally by moving a portion of pension funds into regional stock exchanges.
Jill Bamburg Peak Moment: Bainbridge Graduate Institute – Changing Business for Good
How can business help create the world we want? Jill Bamburg, Dean of Bainbridge Graduate Institute’s innovative MBA program, examines its basic premise: that doing good for people and the planet is good for business.
Peak Moment: San Luis Obispo’s Smart Energy Summit
How can localities buy and build local renewable energy generation capacity? Ken Smokoska describes the opportunities afforded by California’s Community Choice law AB117. Nick Alter and Aeron Arlin Genet describe the coalition of business, environmental, university, county and city governments that took part in the summit, and where some of the outcomes can lead.
(posted 8 Jan 2007)
