Food Choices
The food we eat accounts for almost a quarter of our personal carbon footprint so it’s an area where we, acting as individuals but even better as a community, can make a big difference.
Our campaign this month focuses on air freight of vegetables.
Air freight is just one element of making good food choices and in future months we will be focusing on other aspects of food choices including those beyond carbon emissions.
Tesco and other supermarkets seem insensitive to the heavy environmental cost of flying vegetables around the world when good local alternatives are available – see this Daily Mail article We have written to Tesco , Booths and M&S to ask them why they do this but they have not replied.
For the 4 weeks of November we have asked our members to report on the airfreighted vegetables being sold in Tesco, Booths, M&S and Co-Op and what good British/ European alternatives are available. Below is the report for Week 1.
Week 3 beginning 16th November
We have had the week three reports from our Tesco and Booths monitors. There has been little change in M&S and the CoOp.
M&S : There were at least 14 different vegetables that had been flown to the UK. This included 5 from Kenya, 3 from Peru, 2 from Guatemala …etc.
Tenderstem Broccoli was available from Kenya and Lincolnshire. For more detail see M&S Week1
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CO-OP: Bolton Bridge Rd. We now have a report for week 4 beginning 22nd November . 10 vegetables have been air-freighted from Peru, Kenya and other parts of the world. For more details see Co-Op Week 4
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Booths: 14 vegetables were air-freighted including 3 from Kenya and 3 from Peru. Also noted were Roses flown in from Kenya.
A similar picture comes from our survey in week 3 see Booths Week3
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Tesco: Here are 6 vegetables that were flown to Ilkley from distant fields with their price per kilogram. Compare the price with local alternatives. Now with an update from Week 3, see Tesco Week3 Update
We have a week 4 update:-
