Food Impact

For a while now, I’ve made an effort to buy the food with the least amount of packaging that was a local as possible. At the beginning of this semester I decided to go vegetarian at least two days a week and it’s early, but so far I’ve done pretty well. But, I do like tropical fruit, I do like coffee, and I do like fresh fruit in the winter. However, I think my worst offense is the soda and coffee I drink. And, I have paid little attention to my consumption of genetically modified food and I just can’t afford to eat organic food all the time.

Probably the single worst food item I have consumed in the last couple days is coffee. My coffee it is probably the worst just by sheer volume. I have been writing this paper on Authoritarianism in Russia and have therefore been drinking a lot of coffee. First there’s the packaging. I’ve been making the coffee myself so this coffee wasn’t bought in bulk, it came in a 12 oz bag made of some bizarre hybrid of plastic and foil that cannot be recycled when it’s empty. The beans were grown quite far away in a likely unsustainable fashion. Then, energy was used to roast the beans and grind them. And finally, the whole thing travelled to my grocery store.

One of the biggest problems with eating in an environmentally friendly way is that it either takes lots of money, or lots of free time: lots of money to be able to shop at a place that guarantees a low environmental impact, or lots of time to do the research or grow a vegetable garden. I think one of the things I am most looking forward to about being a real adult after college is having more freedom and resources to be more friendly to my environment. I am pretty good at gardening and look forward to growing many of my vegetables in a vegetable garden, but for now, I’ll do as many of the little things as I can.