The Larder
Page last updated: 18th Aug 2008
Looking for ethical and organic products can be as easy as visiting your local farmers market. Many will have a local bee keeper who, besides producing the kind of honey we need to consume (being local to our region and good for our allergies) will also have produced several other beeswax based products.
The great thing about the farmers market is that you get to talk to the people who make the goods. Find out about them and what they put into their goods. A lot of small companies work on organic lines but have not gone through the process of accrediting. A good chat at the market and you will soon find out.
Part of saving our planet is about how we live our personal life. Work out how many miles (air and land) were involved in bringing you the fresh organic produce you can buy in supermarkets. There are local people producing great stuff all around you, they may not be at the supermarket because large conglomerates force down prices to the extent that the small company cannot compete. This is why so much comes in from abroad - hence the phrase 'food miles'.
I love tomatoes! So, what's the big issue? Well, if I want to eat fresh tomatoes
right through the winter months, someone has to drive over to Spain and get them
for me. Worse, use an airplane to jet them over from even further afield. My ethic was
challenged and I now use tinned in winter. My local deli does some really good
Italian tinned toms, too.
Think local and support your local specialist. You will be able to get a directory of all local producers, try the library or town hall. If there isn't one - maybe it's time to get involved and produced it! My problem here is that these markets are nearly always held during the week which is not good news for a five-days-a-week worker. So I use the delivery option.
I have been using Riverford boxes now for about three years. Riverford did some research into food miles with Exeter University and established that their delivery scheme cuts the food miles for their customers since we are no longer having to drive to the supermarket to collect the produce. There are about four of us who get our weekly delivery sent to our office, so this cuts down our food miles even more.
For me, Riverford is a fantastic scheme. I work full time with my own company so getting to the shops is something I would rather save time on. Riverford deliver all my veg, meat and dairy to the office. I no longer have to think about menus, all I do is open the boxes and put things together. As a result, I am eating mostly UK food; I know the produce will not have flown half way around the globe; everything is organic; and everything is fresh. All that AND it tastes wonderful. For me - this is FAB:>)
Getting ethical was another part of good eating habits. The Fairtrade website is worth a look and has a list of the major Fairtrade suppliers. Some products are easy to source ethically: tea; coffee; sugar; and chocolate for example. Increasingly, we are seeing fairtrade fruit such as bananas and mangoes - although these will have a knock on effect on our food miles. When I'm in town, I pop into my local Oxfam as they source many fair trade food items.
Defeat Packaging
I haven't been here but Unpackaged, based in London, sounds rather neat. You take your own containers for produce and cut out the packaging.
Thinking of entertaining?
If you want to avoid all those plastic knives and forks and poly plates try Vegware. Everything they provide is compostable.