Eat Local-Does Your Food Travel More than You Do?

When we shop at the grocery store today, we don't bat an eye at the sight of strawberries in the winter or perfect tomatoes from Holland. In the space of a generation, we've become accustomed to eating food that's never grown roots in local soil. In fact, most produce grown in the United States travels an average of 1,500 miles before it gets sold.

Trucking, shipping and flying in food from around the country and the globe takes a toll on the environment and on public health. Take grapes, for example. Every year, nearly 270 million pounds of grapes arrive in California, most of them shipped from Chile to the Port of Los Angeles. Their 5,900 mile journey in cargo ships and trucks releases 7,000 tons of global warming pollution each year, and enough air pollution to cause dozens of asthma attacks and hundreds of missed school days in California.

The way we eat has an enormous impact on the health of the planet. By choosing to eat lower on the food chain, and focusing on local and organic produce, we can curb global warming and air pollution, avoid toxic pesticides, support local farmers and enjoy fresh, tasty food.

"Green"
Environmentally- friendly, earth friendly, eco-friendly

What is Greenwashing?
Greenwashing is a term that is used to describe the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service.  The term is generally used when significantly more money or time has been spent advertising being green rather than spending resources on environmentally sound practices.

What is Fair Trade?
We hear a lot about "fair trade" and "fair trade organic" these days. But still, people aren't quite sure what it is. Fair trade is an organized social movement that promotes the payment of a fair price as well as social and environmental standards in areas related to the production of a wide variety of goods.

Sounds kinda complicated, kinda deep. But it’s simple. No one human becomes obscenely rich by making another human disgracefully poor.

Fair trade advocates create opportunities for economically disadvantaged producers- they generate payment of a fair price, enforce gender equality where men and women are properly valued and rewarded, implement safe and healthy working environments for producers, and are required to follow environmental protection guidelines.

Unfortunately, the benefits of fair trade are not reaching all fair trade farmers because of insufficient demand for their crops. Producers sell an average of 20% of their crop at fair trade terms; the rest goes through the world market at much lower prices. That is why we need to build a market for fair trade in the U.S.

For an item to be considered fair trade certified in the U.S., a certfication system was designed to allow consumers to easily identify goods which meet those standards. Products that bear the "Fair Trade Certified" label, like our Peace Coffee, guarantee that every step of the product's production has followed the international fair trade criteria.

What is Organic?
According to US Government regulations, to be certified as organic, the product must be manufactured or produced without the use of synthetic fertilizers, most pesticides, growth hormones, antibiotics, irradiation and gene modification.  Foods labeled 100% organic must contain at least 95% organic materials and the remaining 5% of the ingredients must be on the approved list for use in organic food.

What is Bisphenol-A (BPA)?
If you use plastic water bottles, plastic baby bottles, have dental sealants, consume canned soups, veggies, fruits, organic or not, you also may be swallowing residues of a controversial chemical called bisphenol A (BPA).

BPA was thrust into the spotlight by a laboratory mishap. In August 1998, geneticist Patricia Hunt, Ph.D., now at Washington State University in Pullman, noticed that chromosomal errors in the mouse cells she was studying had shot up—from 1 or 2 percent to 40 percent, as published in the April 2003 Current Biology. Hunt traced the effect to polycarbonate cages and water bottles that had been washed with a harsh detergent. When her team replaced all the caging materials with non-polycarbonate plastics, the cell division returned to normal.

Plastic bottles and containers that are used for packaging food should all be labeled with a recycle code. This is a number (between 1 and 7) that is surrounded by a small graphic of three arrows pointing at one another in a triangle. These numbers tell the recycle center what kind of plastic the container is made of and they also tell the consumer whether there is a known potential health hazard.

 

Bear in mind that simply because there is a known "potential" health hazard, it does not mean that you are going to be immediately ill if you find you have been using a product in that category. In fact, for some of the chemicals to leach out of these "dangerous" plastics, the container must have been heated with the food or liquid inside; sometimes the level of heat required is greater than the boiling point. However, we should all be aware of what we are using and what it may mean. Likewise, simply because there are no "known" health hazards does not mean that a plastic is always going to be completely safe under all conditions.

The following plastics have no known health hazards:

Code 1: Polyethylene Terephthalate, or PET / PETE

Code 2: High Density Polyethylene, or HDPE

Code 4: Low Density Polyethylene, or LDPE

Code 5: Polypropylene, or PP

 

The following plastics do have known potential health hazards:

Code 3: Polyvinyl Chloride, or PVC / Vinyl.

 

This material, used often in flooring and shower curtains, as well as household water pipes (primarily for evacuation only - they should never be used to bring fresh water into the home), used to be used in cling wraps. The plastics industry is adamant that the type of PVC currently used in cling wraps does not contain the phthalates that are known endocrine disrupters. However, these phthalates may still be present in PVC bottles and toys. There was recent information that many baby teethers were also made from PVC, due to its soft flexibility. PVC or vinyl items should never be given to a baby or child who may put them in his or her mouth.

 

Code 6: Polystyrene, or PS / Styrofoam.

 

As well as being another endocrine disrupter, styrene is also believed to be a carcinogen. This plastic is used to make some types of disposable forks, spoons and knives and also the "foam" cups such as those sold under the name Styrofoam. Hot liquid can cause the styrene to leach out of these products, as can fatty oils or alcohol.

Code 7: Other "resins" and Polycarbonate, or PC.

This one has been hotly contested by the plastics industry because of the high heat required for the endocrine disruptor, Bisphenol - A (BPA), to be released. However, BPA is a primary component of PC plastics and is a verifiably dangerous compound. PC is largely used for water bottles of the type used for delivery services (multi-gallon containers) that fit on the "water cooler" at home or office.

Many clear baby bottles are made of PC and there is much in the news about the controversy of these bottles not being labeled with any code so that consumers cannot tell what type of plastic is used. With baby bottles, this is a real concern, as many people boil the bottles with formula or milk inside them. PC is also used in food cans with a plastic lining. Whenever possible, it is recommended that these plastics not be exposed to high temperatures. The plastics industry insists that they are completely stable under most conditions but some studies suggest that leaching still occurs.

The Cost of a Bottle of Water

• It takes 3 liters of water to make one liter of bottled water.
• In 2006, Americans bought 31.2 billion liters of water.
• Almost 900,000 tons of plastic was needed to make the bottles, requiring more than 17 million barrels of oil.
• Bottling the water created more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide.

Toss that plastic water bottle one last time and purchase an eco-friendly Klean Kanteen.  If you do not want ours, please find something to replace those nasty plastic bottles.