When I was a child we spent a lot of our time working in the grape vineyards. At lunch time my dad would often send my brother and me to the store down the block to buy supplies for lunch. Our criteria for the trip was "cheap". He would give us a dollar and we came back with a loaf of bread, a jar of mayonnaise, and a pound of bologna.
As a young married woman I bought a lot of macaroni, hamburger, potatoes, beans, flour, oatmeal, sugar, milk, and apples. I didn't worry about anything except stretching our meager budget and making sure everyone was full and happy.
Nowadays I have to check at least five things before I make a purchase:
1. Price (OUCH!)
2. Calories
3. Salt
4. Fat
5. Sugar (I can't tolerate aspertame- gives me a migraine...so, no diet products.)
If I'm buying produce I should also worry about pesticides, herbicides, fertilizer, and contaminates that might not wash or cook off.
If I care about the universe I should also check for excess packaging and make sure I take my groceries home in a cloth bag.
And make sure the produce wasn't picked by illegal aliens or young children.
NOW the environmentalist fanatics want us to worry about how the product got to the store! Did it arrive by air, land, or sea? Was more energy expended to bring us beans from Africa or sugar from Hawaii? Veggies from south Texas, or apple juice from New York?
Okay. I'm getting a headache! I already need oxygen by the time I finish grocery shopping because the price of everything has skyrocketed. (Dove chocolate was $2.50 one week, $3.68 the next!) Now I'm going to need a tissue and a priest to assuage all the guilt over my part in the destruction of the universe!
I have an idea. I'll send someone else to do my shopping for me! I'll send them to the store with a hundred dollar bill and ask them to buy me a loaf of bread from the local bakery, a jar of mayonnaise brought in by donkey, and a pound of tofu bologna.
I suppose that I'm the closest to an environmental fanatic in the family...
Don't forget that you are already reducing your carbon footprint by growing your own veggies. That should offset some of the damage done by how far you have to drive to the grocery store.
In addition to checking for excess pkging, please look for the chasing arrows symbol that indicates that the pkging can be recycled. Bonus points if any of the boxboard pkging has an FSC logo.
Why in the world would you buy a jar of mayonnaise anyway? GROSS!
:) your favorite tree-hugging daughter.
Posted by: Katrina | March 13, 2008 at 03:18 PM