More green house gas ruminations

It is commonly asserted that a piece of produce has traveled an average of 1500 miles from the field to your fork. (There are a couple of links to these discussion below) The positive side of that is that we are able to enjoy fruits and vegetables that we would not otherwise know, and to have access to our favorites during its off season. Our year round consumption of this fresh produce improves our health, but perhaps not the health of the planet. I have not been able to find a consensus estimate of what that transportation is when converted to CO2, because of the complexities in our transportation systems. Suffice it to say that transportation of produce is a significant source of CO2 emissions. One interesting statistic I saw was that it took 36 times as much fossil fuel energy to ship a head of lettuce from the Salinas Valley in California to the Senate dining room in Washington as the food energy available from the lettuce. A bogus comparison perhaps, but the message is clear.

One way to cut the CO2 from this transportation in half is for everyone to have the Ethylene Gas Guardian in their refrigerator. Proper ethylene control in the home will double the storage life of post purchase produce. It makes no sense to ship twice as much produce as needed, if half of it ends up in a land fill due to improper storage. So, the E.G.G. not only saves money, keeps your produce tastier and more nutritious, but it helps reduce our impact on the amount of CO2 created in its transportation.

I doubt that my issue with the CO2 I was generating and the frustration that was building while I was sitting in California traffic was included in any of these calculations.

http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/pubs/staff/files/food_travel072103.pdf
http://www.foodshare.net/resource/files/ACF230.pdf

The E.G.G. could reduce traffic-maybe not.

We have always considered the E.G.G. a very green product. But, I had a new perspective on the subject while on a trip to southern California a couple of weeks ago. Of the many delights of southern California, the traffic is not one. As I was sitting in the traffic “fuming” about all of the CO2 that I was being forced to emit, I saw several produce trucks crawling along beside me. The thought occurred to me that if everyone used the E.G.G. a lot of those trucks would not need to be on the road.

The USDA tells us that 57% of the fresh produce harvested is lost before it can be eaten. Of that loss, nearly half is lost in distribution and household storage. That means that half of the produce being transported in those trucks will wind up in a land fill or as compost somewhere. An E.G.G. in every refrigerator would reduce produce spoilage in the home by about half, eliminating the need to ship the produce destined to landfills, reducing the number of trucks on the road, allowing me to drive at a more energy efficient speed.

I think maybe the fumes I was breathing was effecting my thinking – or maybe not.