Students from around the world calculated their class mean and standard deviations for their footprints and posted them on our world map.
Do you see differences across the globe? If so, why do you think those differences exist?
Did you use the calculator to try to reduce your footprint down to the average from a citizen of another country? What changes would you have to make to lower your footprint in this way? Are you going to try and take some of these actions in your daily life?
Student Footprints >
Seasonal fruit and vegetables: what are the advantages?
Nowadays with globalization we can buy food from the entire world in every month of the year. It's very easy to go to the supermarket and take everything we want, but did we ever think how much CO2 is consumed to produce these food and especially fruit and vegetables out of season?
Buy exotic fruits or vegetables out season pollutes a lot, because it consumes a lot of energy to maintain the greenhouses or, even worse, to transport the food through the ocean and to preserve it until it comes to destination.
But why could be better to buy seasonal and local fruit and vegetables?
First of all it's cheaper, because the transport is shorter and the energy used is lower. An other important thing is the taste of the food: When fruits and vegetables are picked for consumption that have been naturally ripened on the vine or the three and harvest at the right time, it will surely have a better flavor, while when it comes from the other side of the world is picked up earlier than it's ripening, so during the transport they lose their taste because of the chilling. A last advanta ge is that is more environmental-friendly and it helps the local producer.
I normally buy food in season because of these reasons and I believe that is an important topic to think about, because with this simple action and a little bit more of attention we can take advantage of it and we help our planet too.
You're doing it totally right! Even though it is a temptation to buy exotic things or fuits/veggies that aren't seasonal, we shouldn't. It pollutes a lot and keeping doing such thing motivates more the industries that sell them, making it worse. It is also better for our wealth, because we shouldn't have to eat food that isn't ripe or full of pesticides and so on.
We didn't always have such privileges, so we undoubtedly can live this way! c:
I fully agree with both of you. Like a lot of people I’m an “avocado lover”, but I sadly discovered that the import of exotic food is really bad for the environment... Since I discovered that the import of fuits like avocados, passionfruit, cocco and other tasty things is dangerously polluting our world, I decided to buy them maybe once a month, or even less. For me it’s not a big sacrifice to eat avocados just once in a while, but I’m sure that a lot of people don’t think about the consequences of buying those products weekly, so they’ll go on until it will become a seriously discussed problem.
Those are good steps but I have some good news for you about imported foods: if they come by boat rather than by plane, then the footprint of their transport is rather small. A transport boat uses 100x less carbon per kg of freight than an airplane.
My source for this information is the book "How Bad are Bananas?" (by Mike Berners-Lee) and the answer is: not bad at all- because bananas get shipped by boat. The book estimates that a single banana (including transport) produces about 80g of CO2, or 480g CO2 per kilogram of bananas.
Contrast this with meat: 1kg of beef produces about 20kg of CO2 - that's 40x more carbon intensive than bananas.
I would guess that an avocado shipped from Mexico or South America to the USA is similar in carbon footprint to a banana.
Therefore, my advice to you chiarama is to now worry so much about avocados and instead think about eating less meat if you are an omnivore and want to reduce your food footprint.
I agree with your opinion Markv and I am aware of the problem. Do you think that introducing more information about food and its CO2 production could be a solution?
We could start by giving a lot of information to the buyer, who can choose, on the basis of an ecological reasoning, what kind of food he should buy.
Nowadays there are interests in globalisation and we often do not think about our health and choose our food according to price. All this is wrong, because as you say, the quality is often higher if the production of food is local.
I always try to consume local foods, but I cannot deny that one of the information I look at most is the price. I think it's normal to try to buy something cheap. If everyone were to commit to buy local products, perhaps our average carbon footprint could decrease in the coming years.