harmanjeet

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Climate change and Food Transportation: A Raging Battle  

How many miles does it take for your food to reach the dinner table and at what environmental cost?

A quick look at the supermarket stores and retail chains selling an array of food snacks will show that getting hold of Thai noodles, Japanese green tea or South American cajun spice has become extremely easy and convenient. Gone are the days when one had to pull one’s hair to search for exotic ingredients and foods to satiate one’s carvings. With modern technology and transportation systems blooming more than ever, we can get our daisy dose of world cuisine from the lands of South America, Africa, Europe, Japan, and Asia simply at the touch of a button.  

 However, what most people fail to consider is that the luxury of getting everything one desire under the sun, delivered to their doorstep comes at a huge environmental cost. According to Striebig, Smitts & Morton, retailers and food chains around the world today are prone to source their ingredients and foods from every corner of the world, all the while incurring \huge costs in transportation, packaging and processing of these food items. To let consumers get a taste of their favorite cuisines or to satiate their whimsical cravings, retailers do not leave any stone unturned. Naturally, meeting these demands involves transporting food across a huge distance often via air.

Transporting food from one part of the world to another requires extensive dependence on energy-intensive resources like fuel and water, things that are in finite quantities. Hence, the vulnerability of the food systems hangs on a loose thread as of the current moment. Talking about the concept of “food miles”, Paul Allen in a recent BBC article commented that it is the total distance covered by the food from the place of its origin to the place where it is consumed. The larger is the food miles, the heavier the carbon footprint (bbcgoodfood.com, 2021). Most food products that are not natively grown have the highest effect on the climate, owing to the carbon emissions they cause for being transported by air.  

 Say for instance, berries and fruits that are mostly in season for a minimum of three months in the UK are distributed to other nations for most part of the year through air. Moreover, food being perishable is moved through high-priority transport channels, thereby accounting for the largest part of the emissions. As per Allen’s study, to transport imported food within and around the UK creates around 19 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide each year, a volume that is equally produced by 5.5 million cars (bbcgoodfood.com, 2021).

Travelling so many files for the sake of food does not sound very positive-but the good news is that there is a way for companies and food brands to reflect the amount of food miles through distinct labels. Manufacturing organisations, brands and food retailers can and should introduce carbon labels on their products. Carbon labelling will inform customers on the amount of carbon footprint that has been released by the food product at hand. Another great alternative that will make a difference to lessen carbon emission from food is to consume local food over imported ones.

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Fast fashion spells disaster for the environment

One can buy a closet full of clothes and still have nothing to wear at the end of the day, goes the popular Geny-Y adage. Obsession with fashion is no surprise as millions around the world are addicted to buying new clothes at the drop of a hat. When it comes to resisting the urge to buy new garments, affluent citizens do find it very challenging. However, emerging controversies about climate change and the impact of fast-fashion on the environment has made many sit up and take notice of their lifestyle patterns.

 As Niinimäki et al. have elucidated, fast fashion has quickly mushroomed into a global business phenomenon where people can have access to the latest “celebrity-style” clothing or garments mimicking popular catwalk and fashion show trends, at cheap prices. Fast fashion latches on to the idea of grabbing hold of the newest garment style as early as possible so that they can be used while they are still at the peaks of their popularity curve. In the words of Davis, fast fashion simply spells out for the consumers that it is better to discard old clothes or repeat outfits because they will make one seem incongruent and irrelevant (theguardian.com, 2020).

Now, the bad news is that the fashion industry accounts for about 10% of the global emissions of greenhouse gases and accounts for at least 20% production of waste unusable water. According to a 2019 report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), for creating a pair of jeans from the raw material stage to the finished product, at least 3,781 litres of water are consumed and 33.4 kgs of carbon emissions are produced (worldbank.org, 2019). Another 2020 report by the BBC has stated that 16% of greenhouse emissions arise from packaging and transport activities to retail stores while 40% emissions come from washing clothes and disposing them in solid landfills (bbc.com, 2020).

 The basic business model of fast fashion spells out ramping up production and speed of new launches along with aggressive replacement of garment inventories. The mind-numbing pace at which low-cost apparel stores and brands are launching new styles and foregoing older garments is wreaking havoc on the environment. in which they operate. How then, must one stop the tide and change things for good?

The answer to this is not as tough as one might think. The simplest method to break away from fast fashion and reduce the carbon footprint from shopping is to order only how much is required. As per a 2020 report by the Guardian, 40% of garments purchased by citizens in some countries are never utilised (bbc.com, 2020). Purchasing less clothing can create a big difference and sometimes the best way to lessen the impact of your lifestyle on the environment is to stand out from the crowd through conscious clothing choices. Fashion industries need to switch to sustainable packaging, less use of synthetic fibres, and patronise conscious fashion through purchase of sustainably manufactured clothing. Fasionistas and celebs should also be mindful of their clothing choices and encourage them to experiment with old clothing to create new styles.