Beyond Food

To understand the carbon footprint of our diets, we must reassess our plate (carbon footprint refers to the amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced by an individual, activity, or product).

Possible changes we can each implement include:

• Eat local: Food travels a long way to get to us. Transporting and storing food necessitates the use of fuel, which contributes to pollution. One way to reduce our carbon footprint is to eat as locally as possible. By consuming food much closer to its source, we reduce its total travel-related energy consumption.
• Avoid food waste: About one-third of the food produced today is wasted, sometimes even before reaching consumers. Food that is wasted ends up in landfills, where it can rot and produce greenhouse gases like methane and carbon dioxide. Further, food waste includes not just the food items that go unconsumed, but also food packaging: all unrecyclable food packaging materials, like Styrofoam and plastics, also end up in landfills and oceans, causing long-term pollution.
• Use your agency: As consumers, we have much more agency than we realise to mitigate climate change via our food choices. If we opt for more processed, mass-produced, industrialised food and fast foods, we are not only contributing to environmental damage, but also putting our health at risk. Instead of consuming carbonated drinks in plastic bottles every day, we can switch to consuming water from a reusable bottle — consistently done, this can go a long way. Similarly, as consumers, we have the choice to demand more information on the environmental and health impacts of our food, and thus, to make food producers improve their food production processes and methods or risk losing our business.
• Educate: It is really important to continue learning and to teach our children about how to build a healthier relationship with food, that is good for our bodies as well as the environment. Inculcating in children the values of thinking about the wider consequences of individual actions can go a long way in developing a more environmentally-conscientious generation.