by: Julianne Boulton
Food miles refer to the distance that your food travels from production until it gets onto your plate. The issue of how food miles can increase your food carbon print gained prominence with the publishing of “The Food Miles Report” in 1994. The general assumption is that more food miles equal a higher food carbon footprint. There are some easy steps that you can follow to reduce your food miles.
- Grow your own food.
Growing your own food is the easiest way to reduce your food miles to zero. Additionally you can be guaranteed that your food is organic and quite frankly nothing beats the feeling of accomplishment that goes with it.
- Reduce food miles from the store to your house.
Although it can be hard to track exactly how much your food has traveled before it got to the store, how many food miles are spent for your food to get from the store to your house is 100% under your control. You can walk or cycle to the store. If walking or cycling is not practical then buying in bulk and storing your food properly can reduce the number of trips that you need to make to the store. You can even go a step further and combine shopping trips with a neighbor to reduce each of your individual transport emissions and of course costs.
- Buy local
You’ve heard it a million times but it’s still true that buying local will definitely reduce your food miles. Buying locally can also help support your local community and encourage small scale farmers.
- Cooking from scratch
When you don’t cook from scratch, there is an additional amount of food miles that is associated with each additional pre-processed ingredient that you use. Although cooking from scratch might take some additional time, it does allow you to cut-off these additional food miles from your dish.
The general assumption that the longer food travels the higher carbon footprint the food accumulates holds true for most cases. We must not forget that this isn’t always true because as with any generalization there are always exceptions. Additionally food miles account for only part of the total carbon emission that go into bringing your food to the table. Nevertheless being aware of your food miles and taking steps to reduce them would definitely contribute to reduce your personal carbon footprint.