Living in a suburban town in the Home Counties can be tough for the would-be ethical, sustainable and environmentally friendly shopper, but lately I have found myself questioning exactly what it means to be all of those things. Is it even possible in modern Britain, and are some of those values even contradictory?
I have made it my mission in recent years to avoid the local supermarkets as much as humanly possible, but others will be familiar with daily dilemmas such a commitment creates.
We are relatively lucky when it comes to meat and fish – there is a great butchers in a neighbouring town, and Bob the fishmonger who visits the local market twice a week is happy to talk about the origin of any of his stock. We are also blessed with a very nice deli with a lovely array of cheeses, and if I don’t think too hard about where his produce comes from, I can at least satisfy myself that I am supporting a local independent retailer. Bread, vegetables and other staples on the other hand, are an entirely different matter.
In the absence of an artisan baker within a 20 mile radius, I resolved the bread conundrum by vowing to only eat bread that I have made myself, and I am proud to say that I can probably count on one hand the number of loaves of mass-produced bread I have bought in the past 18 months.
The rest of my weekly shop, however, is fraught with ethical and environmental bear traps; here is the typical, but not exhaustive list of questions that runs through my head with every item placed in my basket:
- Is it organic?
- Is it local? If not, is it British?
- If it’s not British, how far has it travelled and what’s the local environmental and economic impact in its country of origin?
- Is it seasonal and, if not, how has it been grown out of season?
- Wherever it comes from, was the producer/grower paid a fair price?
- Is processed and does it have any unnecessary ingredients?
- Is it good for me?
The more I read, the more confused I get. Buying fresh, British and organic seemed like a straightforward choice, but lately I have come to understand that tomatoes grown out of season in the UK have a bigger carbon footprint than tomatoes grown in Spain, and that imported apples may be more environmentally friendly than English ones that have been kept in cold storage over the winter.
The scary thing for me is how out of touch with the seasonality of food I am. Beyond the scant knowledge that asparagus has a very short season, strawberries appear in June, tomatoes continue over the summer and apples start to appear about now, I really have no idea what I’m doing when I select my produce.
And this brings me to the critical issue that has been troubling me over the recent months – the realisation that I am incapable at this moment in time of being anything close to self-sufficient. I could no more feed or clothe myself than build a rocket and fly to the moon.
Modern industrialised life, in spite of all its choice and luxury, has stripped of us of the fundamental skills to look after ourselves. And in doing so, not only is it damaging our health and social well-being, it is (probably irreparably) damaging our environment.
I’m not advocating a return to the stone-age, but I can no longer ignore the link between self-sufficiency and a more sustainable lifestyle. I am truly bought into the argument that we have become so removed from the production of our food, that our motivation to make better choices and reduce consumption is severely compromised. I can buy fruit out of season at any time of year and there’s no effort involved, so it is easy for me to distance myself from the realities of its passage to the shop floor.
And what I have found, for me at least, is that when there is effort involved in the production, the temptation to waste is greatly reduced. And the greater the perceived effort, the stronger my commitment is.
Take my bread making for example. Every week, I devote several hours to the task of making our weekly supply. Not one scrap of that bread ever goes to waste – how could I possibly chuck out something I have put so much time into? I have learned that bread lasts a lot longer than I thought, that if you toast it, it stills tastes great even when well past it’s best, and that there are many things you can do with a rock-solid lump of bread. Bread pudding anyone?
And as for the meagre crop of fruit and vegetables we have grown for the first time in our garden, every miniscule and misshapen tomato and onion is lovingly incorporated into our meal and savoured.
And so, there I have it. My own solution to living ethically and sustainably. By empowering myself with the knowledge to grow it and/or make it myself, I am equipping myself to reduce my dependency on the industrial food chain, consuming less, wasting less and living healthier. And when I need to resort to the supermarkets, I will do so armed with a better knowledge of what is achievable by natural means.
None of this of course is new. There has been plenty written on food, the environment, sustainability and permaculture but I’m not much of an intellect or an academic and I was never much good at learning from books. So my education starts in my home. It will be a fumbling, bumbling evolution as I learn by trial and error and for every disappointment, there will be the small successes that will bring me satisfaction and pleasure.
What more could a girl ask for?
